‘Deal’s a deal’ for economies with capped US tariffs, USTR Greer says

[PARIS] US President Donald Trump’s trade chief signalled confidence the administration can roll out new tariffs without breaking terms of bilateral agreements, saying “a deal’s a deal” for economies like the European Union and Japan that negotiated caps on the US levies collected on their shipments.

The White House on Jun 2 announced a proposal to hit 60 economies with import taxes of at least 10 per cent, following a so-called Section 301 investigation into how trade partners handle goods allegedly produced by forced labour. That has caused uncertainty for some trading partners including the EU, which hammered out an agreement on tariffs almost a year ago in Turnberry, Scotland.

“We understand that a deal is a deal,” Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative (USTR), told reporters on Thursday (Jun 4) at the OECD in Paris when asked about the EU agreement. “We want to make sure that we are able to resolve the trading practices that are identified as problematic in our investigations and we’re going to take into account the Turnberry deal, of course.”

He added, “we believe that there’s room to accommodate that deal within the context of what we’re doing, provided that the European Union delivers on the Turnberry deal.”

The EU and US agreed to a free-trade deal in July that would see the bloc erase levies on US industrial goods in exchange for a 15 per cent tariff ceiling on its exports. Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on European cars to 25 per cent if the deal is not ratified by Jul 4.

The EU’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, repeated Greer’s language that a deal is a deal.

“This is absolutely crucial for us that at the end of the process we would end up well within the Turnberry parameters and for this this is 15 per cent all-inclusive,” Sefcovic told reporters in Paris. “That is our expectation and that was what was also my communication to Ambassador Greer.”

A separate, ongoing 301 probe into industrial overcapacity is “a matter of weeks” from completion, Greer said. “It’s on a little bit of a different time schedule” given its complexity, he said.

“With all the deals the president has struck over the past year, these are historic deals – our view is we want to stick to these deals,” he said. “We want to make sure that those countries, whether Japan or anyone else, we want to make sure that they are responding to the types of unfair practices that were identified.”

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Greer said China received advanced notice on the forced-labour announcement and that consultations will continue.

“We’re being very responsible about the relationship,” Greer said of talks with Beijing, “We have to protect our economy, we have to have a certain level of tariffs – and our expectation is that as we go through these Section 301 investigations we’ll continue to have conversations with China to try to mitigate the challenges we identify at the same time having an appropriate tariff level as part of that mitigation.” BLOOMBERG