US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that any nation continuing to trade with Iran will be slapped with a 25% tariff on all of its trade business in the USA. He called this punishment “effective immediately” on his Truth Social account.
The announcement did not provide any information on how the administration would determine what “doing business” means, what kind of imports would be affected, or how quickly the policy would be enforced by Customs and other agencies, according to Reuters. The White House did not immediately publish an executive order on the matter, as Reuters noted.
This comes as Iran marks its second week of country-wide protests, with reports emerging of Iranian security forces using lethal measures, according to human rights groups. The country-wide protests, which began toward the end of last month, have taken place in different cities, despite severe communications restrictions, according to AP News.
There have been differing estimates of the number of casualties due to the government’s restriction of information and the challenge of independently confirming the number of people killed and arrested. There have been reports of hundreds of people killed and thousands arrested by activist networks and human rights groups, while the Iranian government has accused foreign elements of inciting the unrest and protesters as being violent.
The United States has extensive sanctions against Iran related to its nuclear activities, actions in the region, and alleged human rights abuses. An extensive tariff threat against third nations would be a more pointed attempt to indirectly pressure Iran by penalizing those nations and firms that continue to do business with the Iranian government.
The implications could be large: “Remaining business relations involve energy sales, as well as trade routes in the region, where business is transacted by third party facilitators.” Without exemptions or an “implementation timeline,” the imposition of tariffs would “raise legal challenges to the authority of the President,” according to trade observers.
However, the Iranian government did not immediately react to Trump’s announcement about the tariffs.
