He is taking a victory lap on his trade agenda after reaching deals with the EU and Japan, but it’s not clear how much countries have agreed to.
President Donald Trump is hiking global tariffs to levels not seen in a century — without triggering a major trade war. But it’s unclear what else his trade negotiations will yield, despite big promises that he and other leaders are making.
The White House has claimed, triumphantly, that the verbal agreements the administration has reached in recent days with major trading partners like the European Union, Japan, the Philippines and others will result in major new trade opportunities for U.S. industries and unprecedented sums of foreign investment into the country.
But there are already signs that the EU, Japan and other governments can’t guarantee the private-sector investments in the U.S. they have promised, and have competing interpretations of other major provisions of the deals as well.
The disagreements and lack of specifics — or written agreements of any kind — on the trade deals the White House has rolled out in recent weeks are raising doubts about how much Trump has really succeeded in lowering foreign barriers or drawing in foreign investment for U.S. businesses, even as he dramatically expands the protectionist policies that decades of American leaders had sought to knock down.
That could prove a problem for some in Trump’s own party, particularly free market Republicans who have given the administration leeway for his on-again, off-again tariff strategy, in the hope that it will ultimately expand markets for exporters in their home states and districts.
“I want to see the text and classified annexes of some of these agreements,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said last week. “Because it’s really important.”