Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Fox Business said the administration is "about to announce a rash of trade deals in the coming days."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking on CNBC, did not say for sure that tariffs will go up on Aug. 1 on trading partners, but said, "I would think that a higher tariff level will put more pressure on those countries to come with a better agreement."
A former Mexican trade negotiator and deputy foreign affairs minister and two think-tank analysts agreed that it would have made sense for Mexico to capture more manufacturing, leaving China in the wake of President Donald Trump's initial trade war, but they said that if Mexico changes course on its energy policy and effectively tackles cargo theft, it could garner more investment.
U.S. retailers will move their supply chains out of Africa and into Asia should Congress not renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act or change the third-country fabric provision for the region, according to trade groups representing domestic U.S. apparel retailers.
Trade restrictions in pending Section 232 investigations for copper, lumber, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, heavy-duty trucks, commercial aircraft and engines, polysilicon and drones are a foregone conclusion, but "exactly what those trade measures will look like" has not been decided, Steptoe's Jeff Weiss said during a firm webinar.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative launched a Section 301 investigation on Brazilian policies that discriminate against American firms, naming these issues:
Former top trade negotiator Wendy Cutler, who, as a career employee in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative led on the South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said that South Korea can't make concessions to avoid 25% tariffs on its exports if the 25% Section 232 tariffs on autos and 50% tariffs on steel go unchanged in the deal.
President Donald Trump, after returning from a political event in Pennsylvania the evening of July 15, told reporters that Section 232 tariffs on pharmaceuticals will start "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, because we gotta move them here."
International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
President Donald Trump said the trade deal he and Indonesia's president reached will provide U.S. exporters "full access," access exporters never had.