Federal election 2025 LIVE updates: Dutton hints at ABC cuts, speaks on crime in Victoria as PM ignites wages fight; Trump tariffs set to begin

A new suite of US tariffs to be announced by President Donald Trump tomorrow will come into effect immediately, the White House says.

Even so, there were reports hours later that trade advisers were drawing up alternative options for Trump to consider, suggesting final decisions had not been made.

“My understanding is that the tariff announcement will come tomorrow [and] they will be effective immediately,” Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “The president has been teasing this for quite some time.”

Leavitt also batted away questions about what would happen if the administration’s tariff program did not deliver a manufacturing boom, as predicted by Trump’s advisers, but instead drove up prices for consumers.

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“They’re not going to be wrong, it is going to work,” she said.

Trump said yesterday he had settled his decision on the reciprocal tariffs to be announced on Wednesday, US time (Thursday AEDT).

But The Wall Street Journal reported the US trade office was drawing up a new option for Trump to consider, which would involve a lower tariff on a “subset of nations”.

That was an alternative to a universal tariff on most imports as high as 20 per cent, or a reciprocal program that would apply different rates to different countries, both of which were also under consideration.

Australian farmers have been told to brace for tariffs of 10 per cent or more on beef and other products, this masthead revealed on Tuesday.