Just before 2 a.m. on March 27, President Donald Trump posted on social media: "If the European Union works with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA, large scale Tariffs, far larger than currently planned, will be placed on them both in order to protect the best friend that each of those two countries has ever had!"
The European Union is going to be the "major victim" of President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" on April 2, experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies predicted.
Nearly 750 organizations and businesses gave input to the administration on trade barriers or subsidies that prevent them from reaching their sales potential.
When the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative asked for comments on policies that reduce U.S. exports, most agricultural trade associations -- and a few companies -- laid out their concerns about tariffs or sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) barriers that prevent their exports from reaching their potential.
Going from zero tariffs on most Canadian and Mexican imports to 25% convulsed Capitol Hill and foreign capitals, with some Republicans diverging from the president's protectionist message and Democrats universally using the action to attack Trump as the reason prices will go up.
Jeffrey Gerrish, former deputy U.S. trade representative for Asia, Europe and the Middle East, told the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee that the time has come to undo the "colossal mistake" of granting permanent normal trading status.
Improving trade for U.S. cars in Europe is "clearly the priority" for American trade negotiators, according to European Union Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, who had a four-hour meeting Feb. 19 with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. trade representative nominee Jamieson Greer and Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council.
The EU chairman of the Committee for International Trade and a former U.S. trade representative predicted that the trade dispute between the U.S. and the EU is unlikely to subside soon due to "fundamental disagreements" over economic policy.
President Donald Trump's chief spokesman from his first term said that half-baked orders from the White House -- like an order to end de minimis for Chinese goods that CBP was not ready to implement -- is in part a result of Trump's memories of his staff trying to slow-walk and stop his tariff ideas.
C.J. Mahoney, who led the U.S. team in renegotiating NAFTA during the first Trump administration, described USMCA as "a modest success so far," that has increased U.S. production of auto engines and transmissions, and increased factory construction in both the U.S. and Mexico.