President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are coming back, although after a further delay. On Monday, Trump sent letters informing 14 countries that they would face tariff rates ranging from 25% to 40%. Trump originally suspended the steep tariff rates for 90 days to give American trading partners time to work out a deal. The deadline has been postponed again, from July 9 to August 1, but these dozen countries may not like their rates.

The most notable countries to receive Trump’s tariff letter are Japan and South Korea, which both received a 25% tariff. Both nations rank among America’s top-10 trading partners, and both have helped counterbalance Chinese influence in the far East since World War II. Both governments plan to push hard for better terms before the August 1 deadline.

In fact, Asian nations bore the brunt of the tariff letters, with 10 out of 14 countries located in Asia. Besides Japan and South Korea, Trump also sent letters to Kazakhstan (which will receive a 25% tariff), Bangladesh (35%), Myanmar (40%), Laos (40%), Cambodia (36%), Thailand (36%), Malaysia (25%), and Indonesia (32%). Goods destined for the U.S. are manufactured in all these countries, as companies pivot away from communist China over its indulgence of slavery, intellectual property theft, and high U.S. tariffs.

In fact, Trump’s tariff letters effectively blanket southeast Asia — every major country east of India and south of China — plus Japan, South Korea, and Kazakhstan. The one notable exception is Vietnam, which reached a tariff agreement with the U.S. last week. Under the agreement, American goods will enter Vietnam duty-free, while the U.S. will charge a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods.

Although lopsided in America’s favor, Vietnamese officials clearly preferred this agreement to the 46% tariff rate they faced under Trump’s tariff scheme announced in April, which would have severely crippled domestic industries.

The only other trade agreements the U.S. has reached since April are a modest deal with the U.K. and the framework for a deal with China, reached after a protracted trade war.

But the Trump administration has signaled there is still time to make a deal. “My mailbox was full last night with a lot of new offers, a lot of new proposals,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The tariff letters warned countries against imposing retaliatory tariffs, as the U.S. would simply adjust its own tariff rate by an equivalent amount.

Trump also threatened additional tariffs against the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) bloc nations, large economies that were later to develop, but have recently begun to cooperate as an economic counterweight to the U.S. and allied economies (such as the G7). As the BRICS bloc met in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, Trump threatened on Truth Social, “Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy.”

Stock markets thus far have shown only a muted response to Trump’s new tariff announcements. Some analysts believe this is because investors are counting on Trump to keep kicking the tariff start date — already postponed twice — further down the road. On Monday, Trump told reporters that the August 1 deadline was “firm, but not 100% firm,” explaining that “If [the affected countries] call up and they say we’d like to do something a different way, we’re going to be open to that.”

For months, economists and businesses alike have drifted in a holding pattern, awaiting the final implementation of Trump’s tariffs that would sponge away the pool of uncertainty. Anticipation of tariff effects slackened U.S. economic growth for the first quarter of 2025, and it has deterred the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates. The muted response to the latest tariff announcements suggests that businesses are happy to maintain their wait-and-see approach for now.

The condition businesses fear above any other is uncertainty. Whether economic policy is tight or lax, efficient or inefficient, businesses simply need to know what the government’s economic policy will be in order to plan accordingly. Businesses plan international supply chains that assemble goods over the course of months, and they build factories and workforces that return their investment over years and decades. Many of these businesses operate on relatively small profit margins, meaning that the sudden imposition of a 25% tariff can entirely throw off their economic planning.

President Trump’s decision to move forward with tariffs brings resolution, of a sort. Slightly revised tariff rates signal to businesses a better estimate of what the final playing field will look like. And the time frame for further changes has shortened to a matter of weeks.

On the other hand, the August 1 deadline is not 100% certain. And a host of lawsuits could potentially derail Trump’s whole tariff scheme. The only hard takeaway is that, after several months on the back burner, the tariff conversation has returned to center stage.