<!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>Mr. Trump’s actions threaten to revive a style of trade brinkmanship that has previously rattled markets, and it will likely result in price increases on American consumers and businesses. Here’s where the tariffs stand.–><!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> […] More
President Trump has placed a 20 percent tariff on goods imported from the country, effective Aug. 1.President Trump is set to meet at the White House on Tuesday with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, who is seeking to leverage his country’s close relationship with the United States to secure a more favorable trade deal.Mr. Trump plans to host Mr. Marcos for lunch. The Trump administration fell well short of its goal of securing 90 trade deals in 90 days by early July, negotiating only a handful. The White House says that it has, so far, reached framework agreements with Britain, Vietnam and Indonesia, plus a trade truce that rolled back tariffs with China.Mr. Trump has threatened higher tariffs on dozens of countries as of Aug. 1, including the Philippines, which he said would receive a 20 percent tariff. Many global leaders have been negotiating with the Trump administration in an effort to lower those tariffs further.Before leaving for the United States, Mr. Marcos said his primary goal was to make sure that trade between the two nations was strong.“My top priority for this visit is to push for greater economic engagement, particularly through trade and investment between the Philippines and the United States,” he said. “I intend to convey to President Trump and his cabinet officials that the Philippines is ready to negotiate a bilateral trade deal that will ensure strong, mutually beneficial and future-oriented collaborations that only the United States and the Philippines will be able to take advantage of.”A statement from the White House said the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Marcos would focus on a “shared commitment to upholding a free, open, prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific and advancing shared economic prosperity.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The president has earned a reputation for bluffing on tariffs. But he has steadily and dramatically raised U.S. tariffs, transforming global trade.President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs have prompted investors to bet that he will “always chicken out” and given businesses and foreign leaders hope that the leader of the world’s largest economy will ultimately back down from his threats if they prove too economically disruptive.Events of the past week have cast serious doubt on that bet. As Mr. Trump renews trade threats against more than two dozen trading partners, he is once again proving his fondness for tariffs, and embracing import taxes in a way that no other president has since the Great Depression.A self-described “tariff man,” Mr. Trump has continually extolled the virtues of heavily taxing imports as a way to raise revenue and cajole factories to relocate to the United States. While the president may ultimately give way on some of his most recent threats, he has still steadily and dramatically raised tariffs to levels not seen in a century.Over the past week, Mr. Trump has threatened 25 trading partners with punishing levies on Aug. 1 unless they sign trade deals that Mr. Trump finds acceptable. The list of countries he plans to raise tariffs on include some of America’s biggest sources of imports, including the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Thailand. Those countries had been in active talks with the United States about resolving Mr. Trump’s concerns in an effort to avoid tariffs.Several may still reach deals to avert some of the levies, including India, the European Union, Taiwan and Japan.But even if some deals are reached, American tariffs on trading partners are still likely to rise significantly. That was the case with the two trade agreement frameworks that the Trump administration has so far announced, with Britain and Vietnam, both of which leave double-digit tariffs in place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The president is deploying the word “deal” liberally, using the term to describe all kinds of trade arrangements, some very limited or one-sided.The Trump administration is seeking “deals” with countries around the globe, telling major trading partners that it is open for negotiations before higher tariffs kick in on Aug. 1.But what constitutes a trade deal these days has become a tricky question. For the president, a trade deal seems to be pretty much anything he wants it to be.While traditional trade deals run into the hundreds of pages and take years to negotiate, Mr. Trump and his advisers have been using the term to refer to much more limited arrangements. That includes the framework deal announced with Britain in May, which was only a few pages long and included many promises that still need to be negotiated.The president also used the “trade deal” term for the handshake agreement announced with Vietnam last week. In a post on Truth Social, he said it would be “a Great Deal of Cooperation between our two Countries” and bring some tariffs on Vietnamese products down to 20 percent. But since then, neither country has yet publicly released any text or fact sheets describing what has actually been agreed upon.The president has also recently taken to referring to the trade truce his officials made with China in June as a “trade deal,” even though the agreement constituted only an agreement by the two governments to roll back the tariffs and other retaliatory measures they had taken against each other in recent months. A trade deal typically makes changes to the rules of trade — but this truce just returned the relationship to the status quo.In a cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump also used the term “deal” to refer to one-sided arrangements that other countries had not consented to at all: the letters that he has been sending via his social media account informing governments of new tariff rates on their exports.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A small company in northern Mexico had faced steep competition from China in making straps, plugs, fasteners, grommets, zip ties and clamps. Now, U.S. tariffs have driven a spike in his business.Jorge H. Martínez, the owner of a small Mexican company near the U.S. border, has seen how President Trump’s threats of steep tariffs have upended markets, bent geopolitics and thrown businesses into uncertainty.He’s thrilled about it.As much of Mexico’s business world worried over the nightmare outcomes that tariffs could cause, Mr. Martínez saw an opportunity.“In a crisis, if you’re prepared, you win,” Mr. Martínez, 40, said as he sat in his office above the hum and clank of machines spitting out tiny plastic parts by the dozen. “Truth is, this whole thing benefited us.”He is the chief executive of Micro Partes, which has about 50 employees in the industrial city of Monterrey. They create a tiny universe of straps, plugs, fasteners, grommets, zip ties and clamps — objects that are critical to many production lines but that most people don’t give a second thought to, if they notice them at all. The products include a hollow ring to protect cables as they pass through walls, a lid to cover the heads of the washing-machine screws, and buttons to hold advertisements on shopping carts.Some of the parts that Micro Partes makes. The company used to compete with Chinese suppliers that sold similar products at low prices.Mr. Martínez has long faced steep competition from China, where many of these parts are made cheaply.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The president said he had agreed to initial trade terms with Vietnam, the second country to strike a limited deal after Mr. Trump threatened steep tariffs.President Trump said on Wednesday that the United States had reached a trade deal with Vietnam, one that would roll back some of the punishing tariffs he had issued on Vietnamese products in return for that nation’s agreeing to open its market to American goods.The preliminary deal will also indirectly affect China, an important trading partner of Vietnam.“It will be a Great Deal of Cooperation between our two Countries,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social announcing the deal.According to Mr. Trump, the deal imposes a 20 percent tariff on all imports from Vietnam and a 40 percent tariff on any “transshipping.”That provision is aimed at addressing Trump administration criticisms that countries like Vietnam have become a channel for Chinese manufacturers to bypass U.S. tariffs and funnel goods into the United States.Which products would fall under the higher tariff rate is unclear. It could refer to goods imported to the United States from Vietnam that actually originated in China. But it could also apply to Vietnamese products that use a certain amount of Chinese parts. The deal could include a lower tariff on goods that are made in Vietnam with fewer Chinese parts and materials, and a higher tariff rate for Vietnamese goods that contain many Chinese components.Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, wrote on X that “if another country sells their content through products exported by Vietnam to us — they’ll get hit with a 40 percent tariff.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
With developing nations crushed by unaffordable borrowing and Washington on the sidelines, some leaders are brokering debt forgiveness deals.At a summit meeting in Rome last month, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy announced that the European Union was working on a multimillion-dollar plan to provide Africa with some debt relief. The move followed a $15.5 million bailout of Syria by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, erasing the war-torn country’s debt to the World Bank and helping a regional neighbor rebuild.The steps are small given the magnitude of the crushing $8.8 trillion debt that weighs on poor and middle-income countries. Many of these nations spend more on interest payments than on schools and medical care.Ideas for a more coordinated approach to debt and development financing will be discussed at a United Nations conference this week in Spain. But the outlook for comprehensive action is bleak. Twenty-five years ago, wealthy nations, including the United States, struck an extraordinary agreement to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in debt owed by poor countries.Today, President Trump’s retreat from multilateral organizations and relief programs, in addition to rising tensions between the United States and China, is hampering joint efforts to address the deepening sinkhole of debt.But as the world’s wealthiest country withdraws, China could do more to relieve the strain on struggling economies, experts say.No other country has lent more to Africa, Asia and Latin America than China. After a lending binge that began in the mid-2000s and gained momentum in the 2010s, China now accounts for nearly a third of loan repayments made by nations in these regions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
If a handshake agreement holds, it will merely undo some of the damage from the trade war that President Trump started.After two days of tense negotiations, the United States and China appear to have walked back from the brink of a devastating economic conflict — maybe.Officials from the two countries reached a handshake agreement in the early hours of Wednesday in London to remove some of the harmful measures they had used to target each other’s economies as part of a clash that rapidly intensified in recent months.It remains unclear whether the truce will hold — or crumble like one struck in May did. Even if the agreement does prove durable, its big accomplishment appears to be merely returning the countries to a status quo from several months ago, before President Trump provoked tensions with China in early April by ramping up tariffs on goods it produces.“It seems like we’re negotiating in circles,” said Myron Brilliant, a senior counselor at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group and former executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.“You escalate, you de-escalate,” he added. “At the end of the day we’re not really further along.”As a result of this week’s negotiations, tariffs will stay where they are. Further details are scant, other than the likely rollback of aggressive policies the two countries adopted since May.China is expected to loosen restrictions on exports of minerals that had threatened to cripple an array of American manufacturers. The United States will in return relax new limits that it placed on its own exports of technology and products, as well as walk back threats to cancel visas for Chinese students in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Negotiators said the two governments would stick to a previous truce and reduce tensions that had escalated in recent weeks between the world’s largest economies.The United States and China have agreed to a “framework” that is intended to ease economic tension and extend a trade truce that the world’s two largest economies reached last month, officials from both countries said on Tuesday.After two days of marathon negotiations in London, top economic officials from the United States and China are now expected to present the new framework to their leaders, President Trump and President Xi Jinping, for final approval.The agreement is intended to solidify terms of a deal that the United States and China reached in Switzerland in May that unraveled in recent weeks. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was part of the negotiating team, said American concerns over China’s restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals and magnets had been resolved.“We have reached a framework to implement the Geneva consensus,” Mr. Lutnick told reporters in London, describing the agreement as a “handshake.”He added that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would be briefed on the agreement before it took effect.“They were focused on trying to deliver on what President Xi told President Trump,” Mr. Lutnick said. “I think both sides had extra impetus to get things done.”The U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, who took part in the discussions, said they were also focused on ensuring compliance with what was agreed to in Geneva about rare earth mineral exports and tariffs. He said the two sides would remain in regular contact as they tried to work through their economic disagreements.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
