As Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, a short-term spike in import volumes at U.S. ports is inevitable, given the president-elect's strident stance on tariffs, some logistics experts say.
President-elect Donald Trump's love of tariffs was the through line of his campaigns and his first administration, but a consultant and a think tank scholar say that how exactly he will hike duties next year -- on what products, from which countries and how high -- are unknowable.
Maros Sefcovic of Slovakia, the EU’s candidate for trade and economic security commissioner, said this week he would “double down” on defending European industry against “increasingly widespread” unfair practices.
Donald Trump, at a campaign rally in North Carolina, said that he'll tell the Mexican president that, if her administration doesn't "stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country," he will "immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send in to the United States of America."
Although the EU ambassador emphasized all the ways that the EU and the U.S. coordinate on trade, a panelist discussing the future of the U.S.-EU trade relationship demonstrated the ways the two economic powers talk past each other at times.
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If a reelected President Donald Trump uses the existing Section 301 tariffs program to hike tariffs on all Chinese goods by at least 60%, that's likely to survive a court challenge, said two law professors who spoke during a Washington International Trade Association webinar on the executive branch's ability to make deals and impose trade restrictions without congressional say-so.
Because China makes 90% of anode and cathode materials, and dominates processing of critical minerals, no matter where they are mined, recent hikes in tariffs on Chinese minerals will do little, trade experts agreed.
Domestic steel producer Zekelman Industries filed a lawsuit on Oct. 21 in a Washington, D.C., federal court alleging that the Mexican government breached its 2019 agreement with the U.S. to slow imports of Mexican steel products. The company argued that Mexico's breach of the deal "has devastated the U.S. steel industry," forcing the company to close two plants due to the oversupply of cheap steel (Zekelman Industries v. United States, D.D.C. # 24-02992).
The Aluminum Association is pleased by the hike in Section 301 tariffs on aluminum products -- even though it applies to more products than it wishes were covered -- and says Mexico's reporting is helping with trade remedies covering Chinese, Russian and Belarussian steel.