Trump administration explored simplified plans for reciprocal tariffs, WSJ says

Trump administration officials are debating over how to implement the president’s pledge to equalize U.S. tariffs with those charged by other nations, with aides scrambling to meet the president’s self-imposed deadline of April 2 to debut the plan, Gavin Bade, John Dawsey, and Vipal Monga of The Wall Street Journal reports. Officials recently weighed whether they should simplify the task by sorting nations into one of three tariff tiers, people close to policy discussions said, according to the Journal. This proposal was ruled out and instead the Trump team is trying to sort how to implement an individualized rate for each nation, an administration official close to the talks told the Journal. Increased tariffs on U.S. steel and aluminum imports took effect last week, with publicly traded companies in the steel and aluminum space including ArcelorMittal (MT), Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF), Nucor (NUE), Steel Dynamics (STLD) and U.S. Steel (X).