Protectionism (Trade)

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Ted Cruz and Other Senate Republicans Question Trump’s Tariffs

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Some Republican senators on Capitol Hill, including one of President Trump’s most ardent supporters, have signaled their uneasiness to the sweeping global tariffs that the president announced this week and that sent global markets reeling.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, warned on Friday that a future where other countries slap retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, as China has already done, was a “very real possibility” and would be a “terrible outcome” for the country.“It’s terrible for America,” Mr. Cruz said on the latest episode of his podcast. “It would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the U.S. economy if we had tariffs everywhere.”Mr. Cruz also said that a trade war would likely push inflation up and burden consumers with higher costs.“I love President Trump. I’m his strongest supporter in the Senate,” Mr. Cruz said. “But here’s one thing to understand: A tariff is a tax, and it is a tax principally on American consumers.”Mr. Cruz’s comments came just two days after the Senate, in a largely symbolic move, voted to halt planned 25 percent levies on Canada. However, the bill is almost certain to die in the House — and even if it does not, Mr. Trump would be unlikely to sign it.Mr. Cruz was not among the Republican senators who joined all Democrats in pushing the bill through. They were Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, and Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, both of Kentucky.On Thursday, another top Republican senator — Chuck Grassley of Iowa — teamed up with a Democrat to introduce a bill aiming to reclaim congressional authority over the implementation of tariffs.The bill, which Mr. Grassley co-sponsored with Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, would require the president to give Congress 48 hours notice of any new tariffs. Congress would then have to approve those tariffs within 60 days, or they would expire. Mr. Cruz was not a co-sponsor. More

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    Lawsuit Challenges Trump’s Legal Rationale for Tariffs on China

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    The New Civil Liberties Alliance — a nonprofit group that describes itself as battling “violations by the administrative state” — sued the federal government on Thursday over the means by which it imposed steep new levies on Chinese imports earlier this year.The new filing, which the group said was the first such lawsuit to challenge the Trump administration over its tariffs, set the stage for what may become a closely watched legal battle. It comes on the heels of President Trump’s separate announcement on Wednesday of broader, more extensive tariffs targeting many U.S. trading partners around the world.At issue are the tariffs that Mr. Trump announced on China in February and expanded in March. To impose them, Mr. Trump cited a 1970s law that generally grants the president sweeping powers during an economic emergency, known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.Mr. Trump charged that an influx of illegal drugs from China constituted a threat to the United States. But the alliance argued in the lawsuit, on behalf of Simplified, a Pensacola, Fla.-based company, that the administration had misapplied the law. Instead, the group said the law “does not allow a president to impose tariffs,” but rather is supposed to be reserved for putting in place trade embargoes and sanctions against “dangerous foreign actors.”Port Manatee in Palmetto, Fla., on TuesdayScott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Trump cited that same law as one of the legal justifications for the expansive global tariffs he announced with an executive order on Wednesday. That order raised the tariff rate on China to at least 54 percent, adding new levies on top of those that the president imposed earlier this year.Mr. Trump’s new order specifically described the U.S. trade deficit with other nations as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.”For now, the alliance asked the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Florida to block implementation and enforcement of the president’s earlier tariffs on China. “You can look through the statute all day long; you’re not going to see the president may put tariffs on the American people once he declares an emergency,” said John J. Vecchione, senior litigation counsel for the alliance.A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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    How Much Will Trump’s Tariffs Cost U.S. Importers?

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    <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–> <!–> [–> China The average tariff rate in 2024 was 11.4% and would increase to 62.9% under Trump’s tariffs.<!–> –> Vietnam The average tariff rate in 2024 was 3.8% and would increase to 48.4% under Trump’s […] More

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    Trump’s Tariffs Hit Garment Makers in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka Hard

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    Through Covid, political chaos, and economic disarray, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh kept one industry central to their hopes of prosperity afloat: the manufacturing of ready-made garments, with the United States as their main market.Then came President Trump’s tariffs.The two countries are reeling after Sri Lanka was hit with 44 percent tariffs and Bangladesh subjected to 37 percent levies. Officials in both countries scrambled to contain panic among business leaders, who worried that they may no longer be able to compete with bigger manufacturing powers, and that their orders could shift to places with lower tariffs and greater industrial muscle.“We will have to write our obituary notice,” said Tuli Cooray, a consultant at the Joint Apparel Association Forum of Sri Lanka, an industry association. “Forty-four percent is no joke.”The Trump administration’s tariffs have hit countries at the heart of the global apparel industry especially hard. An analysis by William Blair, an equity research firm, showed that the countries that produce 85 percent of U.S. apparel imports faced an average tariff of 32 percent.Targeting the manufacturers not only upends the economies of these nations, but also adds to the burden of U.S. companies, analysts warned. William Blair said merchandise costs could go up by about 30 percent and American consumers may ultimately feel the pinch.Bangladesh sends more than $7bn of clothing to the U.S. every year. The country’s garment manufacturing industry makes up 80 percent of its total exports and employs more than four million people, mostly women. Bangladesh has one of the highest female work force participation rates in the region, which has helped lift a large section of the population out of poverty.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

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    Trump’s Tariffs Pose a New Threat for Germany’s Stagnant Economy

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    Germany had hoped that a new government would revive its stagnant economy, but President Trump’s sweeping new tariffs are stoking worries that the country will fall short of its 0.3 percent growth expectations this year.Calling the tariffs “an attack on the rules of global trade which created prosperity around the world,” Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, stressed on Thursday that his country was counting on cooperation among the European Union members to defend their interests.Mr. Scholz, whose government lost an election in February but is still operating in a caretaker capacity, is limited in his ability to act as the country awaits the formation of a new government, expected in the coming weeks. The timing couldn’t be worse for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to respond to the tariffs without clear leadership.Germany could be the hardest hit of all 27 members of the bloc, given the large amount of trade that Germany does with the United States. Last year, Germany exported goods worth 161.4 billion euros, or $178.4 billion, to the United States, according to the country’s federal statistics office.Last month, Germany’s Parliament agreed to loosen the country’s restrictions on debt in an effort to juice the economy, which contracted for the past two years. The move allowed lawmakers to create a new infrastructure fund worth €500 billion (almost $550 billion), which restored some optimism to markets and businesses.But economists at Morgan Stanley warned that the impact of the tariffs could threaten prospective growth sparked by the package and the possibility of increased spending on defense.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

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    Trump Tariffs Aim to Revive U.S. Manufacturing. Is That Possible?

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    President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on a scale unseen in nearly a century is more than a shot across the bow at U.S. trading partners. If kept in place, the import taxes will also launch an economic project of defiant nostalgia: an attempt to reclaim America’s place as a dominant manufacturing power.In the postwar heyday of American manufacturing, which endured into the 1970s, nearly 20 million people once made their living from manufacturing. The United States was a leading producer of motor vehicles, aircraft and steel, and manufacturing accounted for more than a quarter of total employment.By the end of last year, after a fundamental reordering of the world economy, manufacturing employed about 8 percent of the nation’s workers.Now, the country is wealthier than ever. Yet the economy looks, and feels, quite different — dominated by service work of all types, both lucrative and low-wage. Industrial hubs in the American interior have often withered, leaving many strongholds of Mr. Trump’s base on the economic fringes.Protectionist industrial policies, of varying methods and attitudes, have been on the rise for a decade — from the time Mr. Trump began his first campaign for president in 2015 through the presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr. and now with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office again.But the president’s announcement, at a flag-draped Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, represented a tectonic shift in U.S. economic policy, the fullest repudiation of an embrace of global free trade that began on a bipartisan basis in the 1980s.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

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    Trump Says His Tariffs Will Address Unfair Global Trade. Is He Right?

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    President Trump has accused America’s trading partners of undermining the United States for decades, saying they have engaged in unfair trade practices to steal the country’s wealth and enrich their own economies.He has set his sights on not only adversaries like China, but also traditional allies like Canada and Europe. And he has complained about a number of factors, including high tariffs that other countries charge American products, and persistent trade deficits the United States has with foreign countries. Mr. Trump has promised to correct this situation on Wednesday, when he announces expansive tariffs on foreign products that he says will level the playing field.In some cases, there’s truth to the president’s claim that the United States offers its trading partners more favorable terms than it often gets in return. As a proponent of free markets, the United States has long been more open to trade than many countries globally.That has encouraged the United States to rely on imports of many critical goods, like semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, instead of manufacturing them itself. And some countries do have tough trade barriers to U.S. exports, or economic policies that distort global markets — particularly China, which has flooded the world with manufactured goods.Still, trade experts say that Mr. Trump’s claims include a heavy dose of exaggeration, as well as hypocrisy.For example, Mr. Trump has singled out high tariff rates that countries charge on certain U.S. exports including Europe’s tax on cars and India’s levy on motorcycles. But the United States also has high tariff rates that it charges on certain imports, such as a 25 percent fee on light trucks. And Mr. Trump has lumped in friendly allies like Canada, which have some limits to U.S. exports outside a few sectors, with nations like China, which have extensive trade barriers.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

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    To Counter Trump’s Tariffs on Goods, Countries May Hit Back at US Services

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    President Trump says he is outraged by the fact that the United States imports more goods than it sends to the rest of the world. What he rarely mentions, though, is that when it comes to services, the tables are turned.Service sectors — which include the finance, travel, engineering and medical industries and more — make up the bulk of the American economy. Exports of these services brought more than $1 trillion into the United States last year.But that dominance also gives other countries some clout in negotiations — including the ability to impose some pain on the U.S. economy as they look to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s tariffs on goods.The European Union, for instance, could use tools designed to restrict services coming into the bloc as a cudgel.“The real leverage that the Europeans have is ultimately on the services side,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a political research firm. “It will escalate before it de-escalates.”The United States is the largest exporter of services in the world, and a large share of those services, from financial services to cloud computing, are delivered digitally. The country ran a trade surplus in services of nearly $300 billion last year.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

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    Want to Play a Game? Global Trade War Is the New Washington Pastime.

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    Two dozen trade experts gathered recently to simulate how a global trade war would play out. The results were surprisingly optimistic.The world’s biggest powers were deep in a trade war. Economic losses from the tariffs that President Trump had imposed on most of the world, along with global retaliation, were accumulating. Jobs were being lost, inflation was ticking up and the world was both frustrated with and anxious about the United States.While the stakes were real, the trade war was not. Instead, it was a simulation to better understand how a global trade fight might unfold.Last month, two dozen trade experts from the United States and other countries gathered at a Washington think tank to try to simulate what could happen if Mr. Trump moves ahead with his plan to impose punishing tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners.Teams representing China, Europe, the United States and other governments spent a day running between conference rooms, offering proposals to remove the tariffs and make trade deals to forestall economic collapse.The game, which took place at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank focused on security issues, included think tank experts and former officials in the Trump and Biden administrations. The exercise was not aimed at predicting the future. Instead, by acting out what might happen, the participants were trying to reveal some of the dynamics that might be at play as Mr. Trump pursues an aggressive trade approach against allies and adversaries alike.In the last two months, Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, as well as levies on global steel and aluminum imports. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump is expected to announce a plan to raise tariff rates on other countries, and his 25 percent tariffs on cars and auto parts will go into effect on Thursday.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