Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a joint press conference at the White House with President Donald Trump, told reporters: "I said to the president, we will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States. We intend to do it very quickly. We think it's the right thing to do. And we're going to also eliminate trade barriers, variety of trade barriers that have been put up unnecessarily.
White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Stephen Miran is defending the formula used to impose reciprocal tariffs -- taking the trade deficit, dividing it by the amount of exports to a country, and dividing the result in two.
Correction: The list of products exempt from reciprocal tariffs doesn’t include furniture or cabinets, despite those products’ inclusion in the Section 232 report on lumber (see 2504020072).
President Donald Trump, in interviews with "Meet the Press" over the weekend, said a 25% tariff on purchasers of Russian oil could happen at any moment if he decides Russia is the impediment to peace in Ukraine.
President Donald Trump described his phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as "extremely productive," in a social media post, adding "we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election to work on elements of Politics, Business, and all other factors, that will end up being great for both the United States of America and Canada. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
Just before 2 a.m. on March 27, President Donald Trump posted on social media: "If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!"
Despite the Trump administration's aversion to government, continuing to combat forced labor is in line with its goals of assisting U.S. manufacturing, experts argued during a March 25 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones Chair Shannon Fura, a founder of Chicago law firm Page Fura, said the language in President Donald Trump's recent executive orders creating new tariffs, which say that goods must pay tariffs before entering FTZs, "are handcuffing some of the benefits" that FTZs are designed to provide.
During a visit by Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin, President Donald Trump brushed away Martin's comments about Irish companies buying Boeing planes and hiring in the U.S. "There's a massive deficit. I don't mean by a little bit," he said, referring to the trade in goods between Ireland and the U.S. "We want to sort of even that out as nicely as we can. We don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland, but we want fairness," he said.
Two Section 232 investigations launched March 10 by the Commerce Department -- one on copper, the other on lumber -- serve as harbingers of potentially more trade activity to come, attorneys with the law firm Pillsbury said during a webinar on "DC Disrupted: Upcoming Tariffs & Trade Actions," said after notices seeking comments on the investigations had been posted.