Dhaka, July 17 -- Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors as soon as 1 August, the latest deadline for the introduction of his "reciprocal" levies on individual countries. The US president told reporters late on Tuesday the taxes on drug imports could be announced "probably at the end of the month, and we're going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we're going to make it a very high tariff".

He added he had a similar timeline for imposing levies on semiconductors, as he believed it was "less complicated" to implement tariffs on the chips required by all electronic devices, but did not provide further details.

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