Protectionism (Trade)

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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

  • 125 Shares109 Views

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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

  • 125 Shares76 Views

    in Economy

    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

  • 150 Shares104 Views

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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

  • 163 Shares93 Views

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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

  • 163 Shares125 Views

    in Economy

    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

  • 113 Shares119 Views

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    Trump Administration Tallies Trade Barriers That Could Prompt Tariffs

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    The Office of the United States Trade Representative released a report highlighting foreign trade barriers that could influence tariffs the president puts into effect this week.President Trump is set to announce on Wednesday global tariffs that he says will combat unfair trade treatment by other countries and make sure American exporters remain competitive.On Monday, the Office of the United States Trade Representative released a wide-ranging report on foreign trade barriers that could hint at some of the trade battles the Trump administration aims to fight.In an annual report, the office listed the most important barriers to U.S. exports in dozens of countries. Those obstacles included tariffs, but also laws, regulations and policies that the administration said undermine competition. Here are eight of the most consequential trading partners for the United States that could be targeted in the president’s tariff announcements this week.ChinaThe report dedicated almost 50 of its nearly 400 pages to China, which has long been a subject of trade criticism for American officials and companies.The report criticized China as using industrial planning and other policies to support certain sectors it had targeted for “domination,” such as robotics, aerospace, new energy vehicles and biopharmaceuticals. The trade representative’s office argued that those tools sometimes worked by discriminating against or taking advantage of foreign enterprises, and that the program had allowed Chinese firms to win market share at the expense of foreign competitors.The office also pointed out that China had not followed through in rolling out provisions of the trade deal signed with Mr. Trump in his first term, including commitments to open up its agricultural market and protect U.S. intellectual property. Trade data also shows that China fell far short of commitments it made to purchase U.S. goods and services in 2020 and 2021, the report said.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

  • 125 Shares125 Views

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    Trump’s Tariff Agenda Bets on Americans Giving Up Cheap Goods

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    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argues that the American dream is about more than cheap televisions, but inflation-weary consumers might disagree.Follow the latest news on the Trump administration.President Trump’s sweeping tariffs are expected to raise the cost of cars, electronics, metals, lumber, pharmaceuticals and other products that American consumers and businesses buy from overseas.But Mr. Trump and his advisers are betting that they can sell an inflation-weary public on a provocative idea: Cheap stuff is not the American dream.“I couldn’t care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press show on Sunday in response to fears of foreign car prices spiking.The notion that there is more to life than low-cost imports is an acknowledgment that tariffs could impose additional costs on Americans. It is also a pitch that the burden will be worth it. Mr. Trump’s ability to convince consumers that it is acceptable to pay more to support domestic manufacturing and adhere to his “America First” agenda could determine whether the president’s second term is a success or a calamity.But it is not an easy sell. The onslaught of tariffs has roiled markets and dampened consumer confidence. Auto tariffs that go into effect on Thursday will add a 25 percent tax on imports of cars and car parts, likely upending pricing in the sector. Mr. Trump has already imposed tariffs of 20 percent on Chinese goods and more are expected later this week, when the president announces his “reciprocal” tariffs on major trading partners, including those in Asia and Europe.In confronting anxiety over the trade uncertainty, Mr. Trump and his top economic aides have resorted to asking Americans to think about the bigger picture. They espouse the view that Mr. Trump’s trade wars are necessary to correct decades of economic injustice and that paying a bit more should be a matter of national pride.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