Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser who returned for President Donald Trump's second term, told reporters at the White House on Feb. 21 that he and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had just met with top Mexican officials about fentanyl and about reciprocal trade.
A dairy exporters trade group and a former USMCA negotiator say the state-to-state dispute panels under the NAFTA replacement are only a partial success.
Improving trade for U.S. cars in Europe is "clearly the priority" for American trade negotiators, according to European Union Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, who had a four-hour meeting Feb. 19 with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. trade representative nominee Jamieson Greer and Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council.
President Donald Trump said that he will "probably" say more about the scope of tariffs on cars "on April 2, but it'll be in the neighborhood of 25%," in response to a question at a press conference Feb. 18.
The fact that the White House reciprocal tariff memo covers far more than tariffs gives the administration a great deal of leeway to impose tariffs on even trading partners like Canada, Mexico and South Korea that have virtually no tariffs on U.S. exports.
The White House published the annex listing aluminum derivatives that will face additional Section 232 tariffs of 25%, as well as the annex with the steel derivatives that will face 25% tariffs.
The reciprocal tariffs that the U.S. intends to levy on imports -- which could be announced as soon as April 2 -- may not be a one-for-one match of the tariff rate of another country for that product. Rather, they could take into account wage suppression, exchange rate management, "mercantilist policies," non-tariff barriers, value-added tax and extraterritorial taxes.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., one of the leading voices in the House to end de minimis for e-commerce, said she wants President Donald Trump to remove all e-commerce from de minimis, so that it goes back to its original purpose of covering tourists' purchases. Given international direct-to-consumer shipping, "It’s become a vast gap in our customs regime," she said, causing a "flood of impossibly low-priced products that put American manufacturers out of business," and making it "almost impossible to enforce the ban on goods made with forced labor."
President Donald Trump's chief spokesman from his first term said that half-baked orders from the White House -- like an order to end de minimis for Chinese goods that CBP was not ready to implement -- is in part a result of Trump's memories of his staff trying to slow-walk and stop his tariff ideas.
Jamieson Greer, Trump's pick to be U.S. trade representative, told Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that he will make sure that the appropriateness of the 2.5% tariff on cars is reviewed as part of the sunset review for USMCA. Sanders, the most famous leftist in the Senate, had pointed out in his written questions that 2.5% is not high enough to convince all Mexican exporters to follow USMCA rules of origin.