Aranceles means tariffs in Spanish. The singular version is arancel, but you’ll usually see it written in the plural form - los aranceles.
The word is of Arabic origin, from either the word ‘alinzál’ or the phrase ‘alam elacer’, meaning 'price register'.
Similar words include tarifa, tributo, impuesto or aduana, but none exactly translate as a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports, which is what tariffs are.
Arancel can also refer to customs duty (arancel de aduanas) or a court fee (arancel judicial).
Currently though, with Donald Trump rolling out his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on the world, everybody is talking about aranceles sobre las exportaciones, tariffs on exports.
There’s also the adjective arancelario/a, which is used to refer to something related to tariffs, such as la guerra arancelaria (the tariff war) or la política arancelaria (tariff policy).
It’s fair to say that if you’re in Spain you’re going to be hearing the word aranceles a lot at the moment, so here are some ways it’s been used in the Spanish press.
Examples:
Así afectan los aranceles de Trump a España.
This is how Trump’s tariffs affect Spain.
Trump levanta un muro arancelario frente al mundo.
Trump puts up a tariff wall in front of the world.
Estos son los argumentos de Trump para su guerra mundial arancelaria.
These are Trump’s reasons for his global tariffs war.
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