US president Donald Trump has imposed sweeping new tariffs on global trading partners, upending decades of rules-based trade and threatening cost increases for consumers.
Mr Trump said he would impose a 10 per cent baseline tariff on all US imports, taking the maximum to more than 50 per cent for some countries.
Making the announcement in Washington DC on Wednesday, Mr Trump produced a chart of some of the new tariffs he was imposing on nations across the world.
The White House later published a full list of the territories facing import taxes.
The formula the White House used to calculate the tariffs took the US trade deficit in goods with each country as a proxy for alleged unfair practices, then divided it by the amount of goods imported into the US from that country.
The resulting tariff equals half the ratio between the two, meaning nations that import only small quantities of US goods, such as Lesotho and Madagascar, have been hit with more punitive tariffs than much richer countries.
That is also the case for Vietnam, Nicaragua and Cambodia, for which exports to the US account for more than 25 per cent of GDP, according to Oxford Economics.
Some tiny territories have also appeared on the same list as China and the European Union as recipients of Trump's tariff regime, even though they do not have a real manufacturing or export industry.
Some, like the Heard and McDonald Islands in the Antarctic, do not even have human inhabitants.
Russia, Belarus, Cuba and North Korea do not appear on the list of countries facing higher "reciprocal" tariffs released by the White House.
Mr Trump targeted the EU with a 20 per cent tariff.
In response, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said Ireland and the EU would "weather this storm".
Mr Martin said the EU and Ireland would "not be shy" in advocating for their interests. He also said figures used by the US to justify the imposition of tariffs "do not reflect the reality of the situation as we see it".
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU is finalising a package of measures in response to US tariffs on steel and is "now preparing for further countermeasures to protect our interests and our businesses if negotiations fail".
EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said he would talk to his US counterparts on Friday and would devote "adequate" time to further negotiations on the tariffs. "But we won't stand idly by, should we be unable to reach a fair deal", he said.
