All week long, the market has been preoccupied with the hurried effort to strike a new trilateral trade deal to replace NAFTA, which the Trump administration is intent on renaming in order to dispense with what the President says is a “negative connotation” associated with the old acronym.
There was real progress on that front on Monday as the U.S. and Mexico settled differences on the way to striking a bilateral deal that paved the way for Canada to return to the table. Now, the race is on to come up with an inclusive agreement that will pass muster on Capitol Hill.
The read-through for the trade dispute with China is not good. Trump and administration officials variously indicated that Beijing would “have to wait” now that the ball is rolling with Mexico and Canada (and possibly Europe). That, after low-level negotiations between David Malpas and a Chinese delegation held earlier this month, went nowhere.
The second round of 301 investigation-related tariffs went into effect on 23rd, affecting $16 billion in Chinese goods. That was the second tranche and brought the total amount of Chinese imports subject to duties in connection with the 301 probe to $50 billion.
The next round is set to see the Trump administration slap tariffs on $200 billion in additional Chinese imports. That would mark the most serious escalation yet and earlier this month, Beijing announced that if Washington moves ahead with that, China will impose “differentiated tariffs” on some $60 billion in U.S. items.
You might recall that late last month, Trump directed Robert Lighthizer to ponder hiking the proposed tariff rate in the next round to 25% from 10%, an apparent effort to raise the stakes and force China to relent.
Well, on Thursday afternoon, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reported that according to a half-dozen sources, “Trump has told aides he wants to move ahead with the plan to impose tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports as soon as the public comment period concludes next week.”
