Exclusive: Trump’s tariff deal ‘quietly’ added 10% raise which nobody is complaining about anymore, says his former commerce secretary

Eleanor Pringle

Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 6:37 AM 5 min read

• Wilbur Ross, former Commerce Secretary and a key architect of Trump’s first-term trade policy, describes Trump’s current tariff strategy as a deliberate evolution: moving faster, hitting harder, and using broader executive powers to impose tariffs for both economic and diplomatic leverage.

The Trump administration’s use of tariffs has sparked debate over the ultimate goals of its economic strategy. However, a former Cabinet member and key trade advisor to the President has suggested there is an underlying logic to the approach.

Since winning the Oval Office, President Trump has announced an evolving range of policies. with economic sanctions spinning higher on some trade partners while others have been granted pauses.

Many of the announcements have not come through official White House channels; for example, Trump threatened a 50% tariff on the EU in April in a bid to get European negotiators to the table—by posting on his social media site, Truth Social.

Indeed, Trump has come under scrutiny from Beijing, arguably the most critical region for the U.S. to make a deal, who claim America’s tariff tactics have been “coercion and blackmail” when instead it should “convey information to the Chinese side…through relevant parties.”

But Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary in his first administration, says there’s a clear tactic at play beneath Trump’s bluster.

The 87-year-old banker turned D.C. power player said there is an “art” to Trump’s dealmaking, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has suggested; Ross told Fortune in an exclusive interview: “Well, everybody’s reaction to [tariffs] was first shock and amazement, but the actual retaliatory measures that they put in were fairly modest—even China didn’t match in dollar for dollar.

“There’s a real reason for that, I think the other countries, as they’ve thought about it, have recognized that while they have to talk very bravely for their domestic political constituencies… They also recognize that at the end of the day, they can’t afford a tit-for-tat escalating trade war with us.”

And this was a fact Trump was relying on, continued Ross: “One of the earliest things he put in was that 10% tariff on everything from everywhere.

“Nobody is even complaining about that anymore. When you think about it, in the normal course, getting quietly to do a 10% tariff on everything from everywhere was a huge achievement, even if he didn’t get anything else. But because he followed it with these much more extreme things, it makes the 10% look like it’s not such a big bother.