Trump Administration: Higher Tariffs Are Set To Take Effect Friday

President Donald Trump is ready to follow through on his weekend tweet declaring that higher tariffs on Chinese goods will be put into place Friday — despite the confirmation of high-level talks scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

What Happened

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will lead a team of delegations coming to Washington this week, and this may be a positive development for the trade talks, CNBC reported.

The higher tariffs are set to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said, according to CNBC — but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said the U.S. could reconsider the increase if the trade talks go well.  

Survey: Execs Less Concerned About Tariffs 

Investors working under the assumption that U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods will rise this week and impact American companies may want to reconsider, according to a CNBC survey of CFOs. 

CNBC's Frank Holland said Tuesday that CFOs expressed their "lowest level of concern" since new tariffs were slapped on Chinese goods last year.

Forty percent of CFOs surveyed in the second quarter of 2019 expect U.S. trade policies to be a negative catalyst for their business. In comparison, 75.7 percent of CFOs expressed near-term concern during a similar survey in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Forty-five percent of CFOs surveyed in the second quarter said U.S. trade policy will have no impact on their business, while another 15 percent said current policies could have a positive impact.

"Notwithstanding all the noise, tariffs — at least to now — haven't mattered to our economy outside agriculture," Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and expert on international trade told CNBC.

"If the president were to apply all the tariffs he's threatened, that would matter, but to now it's more been about disrupting the supply chains running through smaller economies."

Consumers Could Foot The Bill

The U.S. consumer could feel the impact if new tariffs are imposed on products like furniture and apparel, CNBC quoted Citigroup global economist Cesar Rojas as saying. Many of the remaining Chinese goods that haven't been subjected to tariff hikes are within the consumer goods category.

On the other hand, it takes months to enact a new set of tariffs, which gives trade negotiations extra time to reach a deal even there is no resolution this week, Dan Clifton, head of policy research at Strategas Research, told CNBC.

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