Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Mon­day he would be plac­ing a 25% tar­iff on all im­ports from any coun­try that buys oil or gas from Venezuela as well as im­pos­ing new tar­iffs on the South Amer­i­can coun­try it­self.

In a Truth So­cial post, Trump said Venezuela has been “very hos­tile” to the U.S. and coun­tries pur­chas­ing oil from it will be forced to pay the tar­iff on all their trade to the U.S. start­ing April 2.

Venezuela will face a “Sec­ondary” tar­iff be­cause it is the home to the gang Tren de Aragua, he said. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is de­port­ing im­mi­grants that it claims are mem­bers of that gang who il­le­gal­ly crossed in­to the Unit­ed States.

Trump’s lat­est tar­iffs threat sug­gests the ad­min­is­tra­tion will take bold­er moves against Chi­na, Venezuela’s largest for­eign cus­tomer. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­ready levied uni­ver­sal 20% tar­iffs on im­ports from Chi­na as an ef­fort to crack­down on the il­lic­it trade in fen­tanyl.

But Trump has la­beled April 2 as “LIB­ER­A­TION DAY” based on his still un­clear plans to roll out im­port tax­es to match the rates charged by oth­er coun­tries, as well as ful­ly levy 25% tar­iffs against Mex­i­co and Cana­da, the two largest U.S. trad­ing part­ners.

The U.S. stock mar­ket had been climb­ing on Mon­day as in­vestors ex­pect the tar­iffs to be more tar­get­ed than they ear­li­er feared. Still, the S&P 500 in­dex is down so far this year out of con­cerns that a trade war could hin­der eco­nom­ic growth and in­crease in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures.

Trump said his so­cial me­dia post on Mon­day would serve as no­ti­fi­ca­tion of this pol­i­cy to the De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies.

The tar­iffs would most like­ly add to the tax­es fac­ing Chi­na, which in 2023 bought 68% of the oil ex­port­ed by Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to a 2024 analy­sis by the U.S. En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion. Spain, Rus­sia, Sin­ga­pore and Viet­nam are al­so among the coun­tries re­ceiv­ing oil from Venezuela, the re­port shows. The Unit­ed States in Jan­u­ary im­port­ed 8.6 mil­lion bar­rels of oil from Venezuela, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­sus Bu­reau.

JOSH BOAK

Boak cov­ers the White House and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy for The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. He joined the AP in 2013.

By JOSH BOAK

WASH­ING­TON (AP)