How Washington is bracing for Trump’s next trade war
Trading partners are taking the threat of a new trade war seriously, even if they don’t take Trump’s comments literally.
American businesses and trading partners are beginning to struggle with a familiar problem: former President Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
The former president and his advisers have been floating the idea of hiking tariffs to levels not seen in decades, leaving American businesses, foreign officials and their lobbyists in Washington with a recognizable dilemma. They can either acknowledge and publicly push back on the rhetoric — and potentially make the situation worse by sparking Trump’s ire — or keep quiet and risk being caught flat footed if Trump wins.
Trump “has not let up in his romance with tariffs,” said Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade negotiator. “We should expect more variations on the tariff theme throughout his campaign.” The Republican presidential frontrunner is reportedly considering up to a 60 percent tariff on all imports from China and a 10 percent “universal” tariff on all other trading partners if he wins reelection in November. But Trump, in his usual style, has refused to commit to any specific numbers, saying on Fox Business this Sunday that tariffs on China could even be higher than recent reports.