Donald Trump has ordered his team to develop a plan to impose reciprocal tariffs, or import taxes, on goods coming into the US from other countries.
It is not yet clear what form these tariffs will take.
But it is likely to mean an attempt to impose tariffs on imports into the US at the same rate as those other countries impose on goods imported from the US.
Trump has justified this by arguing that other countries often impose higher tariffs on imports from the US, which he says is an unfair situation for US exporting companies.
The president has argued that his reciprocal tariffs would level the playing field.
BBC Verify has investigated whether Trump has a valid argument.
How do countries set tariffs on imports?
First, it is important to understand the rules of global trade.
Countries are allowed to impose tariffs on imports under the terms of their membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
These tariffs can vary depending on the imported product.
For example, a country might impose a 10% tariff on rice imports and a 25% tariff on cars.
But under WTO rules, they are not supposed to discriminate between countries when setting tariffs on specific imported products.
For example, Egypt cannot impose a 2% tariff on wheat from Russia, but a 50% tariff on wheat from Ukraine.
In international trade, this is known as the "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) principle: everyone must be subject to the same tariff by the country imposing the tariff.
An exception occurs when two countries sign a free trade agreement between themselves that covers most of their trade. In this situation, they can impose no tariffs on their intermediate goods but maintain tariffs on goods from elsewhere in the world.
What tariffs do countries currently have?
While most countries have a range of tariff rates on imports of different products, they also report to the WTO the average external tariff, which reflects the overall average tariff rate applied to all imports.
The US average external tariff in 2023 was 3.3%.
This is slightly lower than the UK’s average tariff of 3.8%.
This is lower than the European Union’s average tariff of 5% and China’s average tariff of 7.5%.
The US average tariff was considerably lower than the average tariffs of its other trading partners.
For example, India’s average tariff was 17%, while South Korea’s was 13.4%.
The US average tariff was lower than Mexico (6.8%) and Canada (3.8%), although trade agreements between the US and these countries mean that they are not subject to US export tariffs. The same is true for South Korea, with which the US has a free trade agreement.
But, broadly speaking, it is legitimate for Trump to point out that some countries have higher average tariffs on imports than the United States.
And these tariffs raise the cost of many American exports to those countries, which could be seen as hurting U.S. exporters compared to exporters from those countries who sell goods to the United States.