Latest news with #DeborahElms
Al Jazeera
07-07-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Trump says BRICS nations may face 'additional' US tariffs
Trump says BRICS nations may face 'additional' US tariffs Quotable Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation, explains why Trump has called BRICS nations 'anti-American' and said he'll impose higher tariffs on members. Video Duration 00 minutes 59 seconds 00:59 Video Duration 01 minutes 06 seconds 01:06 Video Duration 01 minutes 29 seconds 01:29 Video Duration 01 minutes 00 seconds 01:00 Video Duration 01 minutes 37 seconds 01:37 Video Duration 01 minutes 11 seconds 01:11 Video Duration 01 minutes 06 seconds 01:06
CNBC
07-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Revoking de minimis will lead to diminishing of US in global trade: Hinrich Foundation
Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at Hinrich Foundation, says the end of the 'de minimis' exemption under Trump's big spending bill will hurt American businesses and consumers.
Japan Times
27-06-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Trump's threat of more tariffs makes U.S. trade partners wary of signing deals
Tariff negotiations with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump are running into roadblocks, as partners including Japan, India and the European Union balk at signing deals without knowing how badly they'll be hit by separate levies on exports including chips, drugs and steel. The U.S. Commerce Department is set within weeks to announce the outcomes of its investigations into sectors deemed vital to national security, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical minerals. The probes are widely expected to result in levies applied under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act on a range of foreign-made products in those industries. The problem is, governments seeking agreements to whittle down country-by-country tariffs Trump announced on April 2, and then suspended until July 9, have no idea where those sectoral levies will land. For many, industry-specific tariffs may be more damaging than the broader levies. "Imagine you're a Vietnam or Japan or Korea, and you've just agreed to some potentially painful compromises on reciprocal tariffs, and the very next day after this is announced, they turn around and levy new 232s against you,' said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation. "The last thing you want is to agree to a deal only to be hammered the next day.' A cautionary tale for many countries is the partial deal Britain accepted. That pact left key details about bilateral steel trade subject to further negotiation on a quota system and stronger origin requirements. In the meantime, Trump's tariffs of U.K. steel remain at 25% — failing to meet the British government's goal of lowering them to zero. "There is no clarity in how all of these tariffs would interplay, which is also causing major concerns among our partners,' said Wendy Cutler, a former senior U.S. trade negotiator who's now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. The U.K. framework showed there is some wiggle room with the U.S. on sectoral tariffs, but other nations should not view it as a template for their own negotiations, according to a White House official. The 232 tariffs are meant to reshore the manufacturing of goods viewed as critical to national security, which is separate from the aims of the April 2 tariffs, the official said. Among the difficulties for many countries is understanding how the Trump administration can, at times, view the tariffs — and the threat of them — in a transactional way. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, testifying before the Senate earlier this month, gave an example of how 232 tariffs could be used in negotiations to induce commercial deals. Part of the U.K.'s deal was no American tariffs on aerospace products — which are subject to a pending 232 investigation. "In exchange for us doing a zero tariff — I mean, think of Donald Trump — he then gets an agreement by British Airways to buy $10 billion,' Lutnick said. "They were competing with Airbus, and in part of that agreement, they committed to buying Boeing aircraft of $10 billion.' 'Play ball' Lutnick added that "if other countries play ball with us, I would expect that's an offer we make provided they're buying our aircraft.' Trump speaks during an event at the White House in Washington on Thursday. | REUTERS For the EU, which is already getting hit hard by 25% auto tariffs and 50% on steel, talks around the sectoral levies have made less progress and are unlikely to be solved before July 9, according to people familiar with the process. Officials in Brussels see an agreement on broad principles to allow negotiations to continue as the best-case scenario at this stage in the EU-U.S. talks, the people said. Japan is keen on settling all potential U.S. tariffs — from duties on cars, auto parts and metals to Trump's country-specific levies — in one go. But a sticking point in negotiations has been the 25% tariffs on cars and car parts imposed by the Trump administration. Washington is focused on autos because it's the sector that's responsible for most of its trade deficit with Japan. But Tokyo sees that industry as a key economic pillar, since it employs about 8.3% of Japan's workforce and generates around 10% of gross domestic product. "For Japan, automobiles are truly a matter of national interest. We will do whatever it takes to protect that,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters in Canada earlier this month, shortly after he failed to reach a deal with Trump in their in-person meeting on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit. His hand-picked trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, has said Japan won't fixate on the July 9 tariff deadline as he continues talks with his U.S. counterparts. Akazawa has said he expects a deal with the U.S. will spare Japan from higher auto tariffs, even if Trump increases them against other nations. India digs in India has dug in its heels on the issue and is unwilling to sign a trade deal with Washington that doesn't address both sectoral and reciprocal tariffs for its exports, people familiar with the matter said. When it comes to potential sectoral tariffs, Indian officials are pushing for a commitment from Washington that any deal matches the best agreement offered to any other nation it's in talks with, they said. Any deal with the U.S. has to be defensible in the eyes of domestic stakeholders and the U.S. insistence on retaining these additional levies will render Indian producers uncompetitive, the people said, requesting anonymity to disclose private discussions. Indian officials are also reluctant to sign a tariff deal amid uncertainty over their legality after a U.S. federal court deemed illegal last month, the people said. A higher court later gave Trump a temporary reprieve of that order. Court challenge Amid the legal uncertainty, some Trump administration officials believe the 232 levies could effectively supplant the country-by-country duties, Bloomberg News has reported. Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum, automobiles and the expected levies on pharmaceuticals have raised concerns among Indian exporters that have been urging the government to not ink a deal that will adversely impact their shipments. Exporters say the U.S. move to raise levies on metals and autos are a huge setback for them. "These duties impact India's engineering exports to the U.S., which are valued at over $20 billion annually,' said Pankaj Chadha, chairman of Engineering Exports Promotion Council. "We hope that these sectoral tariffs will be suitably addressed in the bilateral trade agreement."
Mint
29-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Tariff ruling is a setback for Trump but doesn't end trade war
SINGAPORE : Shortly after the news broke that a U.S. court invalidated almost all of President Trump's tariffs, one Vietnam-based furniture exporter responded with an astonished text: 'WHAT???" Wednesday's shock decision by a hitherto little-known U.S. federal court sows fresh uncertainty over the U.S. assault on global trade, the latest in a series of escalations and reversals over trade policy that have whipsawed financial markets and scrambled corporate decision-making. The bottom line, say trade experts, is that the global trade war is far from over. While a setback for the Trump administration, the ruling is unlikely to deter the president from seeking to rewrite the rules of global commerce in America's favor or lead him to abandon tariffs as the principal tool to do so. The administration has already said it will appeal the ruling, and trade experts and lawyers say it has a variety of other legal avenues to prosecute the trade war that are unaffected by Wednesday's decision. 'This is just one more bump in the tariff road that we are going to be on for as long as Trump remains in office," said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Singapore-based Hinrich Foundation, which advocates for free and open trade. 'He loves tariffs and he loves the idea of being able to impose them at will, and I don't think he's going to give that up easily." The New York-based Court of International Trade's ruled that the president overstepped his authority in invoking powers granted to the executive in an economic emergency to impose sweeping tariffs on all U.S. trade partners April 2. The judgment undermines the legal basis for those 'reciprocal" tariffs—which the administration paused for 90 days to allow time for negotiations—that are the centerpiece of Trump's effort to rein in the U.S.'s yawning trade deficit. The court also shot down special levies of 20% imposed on Canada, Mexico and China for their alleged role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis. The administration's plan to appeal could ultimately land the case in the Supreme Court. It is unclear if the tariffs affected by the judgment will remain in place while appeals are heard. Stocks in Asia rose Thursday following the ruling, with investors warming to the prospect of faster economic growth as trade tensions ease. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closed up 1.35%, while Tokyo's Nikkei benchmark was up 1.88%. For now, business executives say they're unsure how to respond, given the legal fog. Jeffy Ma, a hat manufacturer in Guangzhou, China, said the ruling was good news, but he hadn't yet heard from his U.S. customers. 'After all, tariffs haven't been completely canceled," he said. New cars sit near the Port of Long Beach in California, where new tariffs have constricted the flow of imports. 'Some large retailers are asking us to see if we can ship more now," said William Su, who splits his time between Taiwan and New York as chief executive officer of Teamson, which sells China-made products, such as toys, through U.S. retailers. But he said muddiness about the future of tariffs on China could deter retailers from approving new production. Some executives expressed caution over the decision, saying that Trump will likely search for other ways to reimpose steep tariffs on China and potentially other Asian economies that run large and persistent trade surpluses with the U.S., including Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. 'I don't think it will change much as U.S. customers will keep on moving products out of China as the focus of Trump is clearly China. Just adding to more instability with everyone wondering what Trump's next step will be," said Michel Bertsch, who runs a furniture-manufacturing company in Vietnam that exports to the U.S. Trump's trade broadside and his frequent reversals have sent manufacturers, retailers and shippers around the world racing to respond, upending longstanding supply chains in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Importers from China canceled billions of dollars' worth of orders after Trump slapped 145% tariffs on the country earlier this year, only to rush to revive some of them when Washington and Beijing later reached a truce to lower duties. Companies have put investment on hold amid the uncertainty over U.S. trade policy. The court's decision doesn't affect a host of other tariffs imposed on U.S. imports, including 25% levies placed on steel, aluminum and cars. Those levies were imposed using alternative legal avenues to that questioned by the New York court. Those more conventional avenues, known as Section 232 and Section 301, still give the president substantial authority to impose new tariffs, though they tend to be used to target imports in specific sectors and don't confer the broad power to tariff all goods in the way the president had sought. The Trump administration says sweeping tariffs are necessary to counter what it says are unfair practices of U.S. trading partners that have contributed to the U.S.'s large and persistent deficit in trade in goods. The 90-day tariff pause announced not long after April 2 sparked a stampede by countries eager to strike trade agreements with Trump to avoid the new tariffs. The U.S. reached agreement with the U.K. over tariff reductions and a framework for further talks, and agreed with Beijing a marked de-escalation in a bilateral trade fight that saw Washington and Beijing push tariffs on each others' products above 100%. The truce brought new tariffs on most Chinese goods down to around 30%, though some products face additional levies. But progress with other trading partners including the European Union, South Korea and Japan has been slow. Trade experts say the court ruling complicates those negotiations, since it means countries might be less willing to make concessions on trade if the courts ultimately decide the basis for Trump's move was faulty. 'Do you still negotiate knowing the whole thing might get settled with the bang of a gavel?" said Paul Nadeau, an associate professor in international affairs at Temple University's Japan campus. Write to Jason Douglas at Jon Emont at and Hannah Miao at
Japan Times
10-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Trump's first trade pact offers faint glimpse of art of the deal
For global leaders puzzling over how to negotiate with Donald Trump, the U.S. president's inaugural pact with the U.K. offers a few clues on how much ground he's prepared to give. Thursday's announcement of their trade framework in the Oval Office shows Trump is willing to keen progress even without a final accord and that can buy political credit with the White House. There's also evidence that American levies can be talked down, but that may not be much more of a template, according to analysts. "If you thought you were going to have to have a real deal done in 90 days, you've now at least seen from the U.K. that that need not be true,' said Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore. "You can have a sketch of an idea of a plan.' The framework Trump greeted as a "breakthrough' will, he says, fast-track U.S. items through U.K. customs and reduce barriers on "billions of dollars' of other exports. The British government meanwhile says tariffs on U.K. cars will drop to 10% and those on metals to zero. Final details need to be negotiated over coming weeks. Stay updated on the trade wars. Quality journalism is more crucial than ever. Help us get the story right. For a limited time, we're offering a discounted subscription plan. Unlimited access US$30 US$18 /mo FOREVER subscribe NOW That extended cliffhanger requires caution on making conclusions. Trump's insistence on preserving some proposed levies, his assent to specific carveouts, and the lack of any requirements regarding China are among highlights analysts point to. But the U.S. surplus with the U.K., as well as their longstanding ties may mean this skirmish in the president's trade war isn't much of a guide for exporters such as Japan or the European Union engaging in negotiations of their own. "You can't be optimistic just because of the U.S.-U.K. announcement,' said Hiroshi Namioka, chief strategist at T&D Asset Management in Tokyo. "The U.S. doesn't have a trade deficit with U.K., so reaching a deal was easier.' Asian countries such as Japan, Vietnam and South Korea that have large trade surpluses with the U.S. have moved quickly to initiate talks, with few signs of progress. Speaking shortly after the deal announcement, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said negotiations with South Korea and Japan are taking "an enormous amount of time.' He added that India could be among the next countries to reach an agreement, while cautioning that work still needs to be done. The EU is also making limited headway in its own engagement with the administration. That's partly because of its sheer size, according to Sam Lowe, partner and head of international trade practice at Flint Global in London. "Whereas the option of retaliation was not really available to the U.K. due to its much smaller economy, the EU can inflict some damage on the U.S. via tariffs and other measures,' he said. "This potentially gives it more leverage, but also means any deal will probably take longer.' One component of the U.K. accord that will be analyzed closely in auto-making hubs was the cut in tariffs on British cars to 10% from 27.5% for 100,000 vehicles per year. Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's chief trade negotiator, speaks to members of the media at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on May 1. | BLOOMBERG Auto exports from Japan and South Korea to the U.S. are each more than 10 times larger than those from the U.K., and account for around one-third of their sales to America. While the deal offers some encouragement that 25% levies on Japanese and South Korean cars could be lowered, Tokyo insists on a complete removal. "We'll continue to seek a rethink of the string of tariff measures from the U.S.,' Japan's chief trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said Friday. Similarly, the U.K. agreement is unlikely to serve as a viable template in South Korea's talks because of the importance of cars there too, said Hyosung Kwon of Bloomberg Economics. "To secure lower U.S. tariffs on autos, South Korea may need to make concessions such as increasing imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas and easing nontariff barriers on U.S. agricultural products,' he said. One way of looking at the U.S.-U.K. agreement is that the 10% baseline levy applied to all countries by the U.S. is largely fixed, some trade analysts said. The U.K. said it will keep trying to negotiate over that so-called reciprocal tariff. For other countries including Australia and Singapore, it may be the case that there's no real point in discussing going below the 10% level right now, said Elms at the Hinrich Foundation. In one exception, the U.K. was able to get U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum lowered to zero from 25% as part of what the U.S. called "a new trading union.' It was not immediately clear how this agreement might affect U.S. tariffs on the metals imposed on other countries. The framework didn't offer much insight into nontariff barriers to trade, including regulations and subsidies that U.S. officials have highlighted. The U.K. said it wouldn't loosen safety checks on food imports despite removing levies on beef and other agricultural products. Some analysts also noted the lack of any reference to China in the U.S.-U.K. framework despite indications given by U.S. officials that they want help in efforts to pressure Beijing. U.S. and Chinese officials are set to meet in Switzerland this weekend for their first round of negotiations.
