{"id":152108,"date":"2025-06-04T02:47:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-ambitious-push-for-trade-deals-is-hitting-some-snags-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-06-04T02:47:57","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:47:57","slug":"trumps-ambitious-push-for-trade-deals-is-hitting-some-snags-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-ambitious-push-for-trade-deals-is-hitting-some-snags-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump's ambitious push for trade deals is hitting some snags – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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President Donald Trump\u2019s ambitious plan to broker dozens of trade deals with some of the United States\u2019 closest trading partners has begun to show cracks as the clock on his 90-day pause for most country-specific tariffs winds down to just over one month.
While some of the fissures are self-inflicted, like recent threats of tariffs against the European Union and higher duties on steel imports, a fresh set of court rulings<\/a> questioning the president\u2019s tariffs-granting authority now hangs over his entire push to reset U.S. trade relations.
On Friday, Trump announced a plan to double steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%. That followed new accusations against China<\/a> of violating the handshake agreement the two countries had struck in early May during talks in Geneva.
Over the weekend, the E.U. responded to the steel and aluminum tariffs by warning it was preparing to take countermeasures against U.S. goods. China, meanwhile, issued its own accusation against the United States over the weekend, alleging it had undermined the Geneva pact by imposing new export controls on computer chips<\/a>.
The increasingly public disagreements over trade aren\u2019t unexpected despite Trump\u2019s ambitious timeline and the optimistic rhetoric from White House officials, former trade negotiators said. Typically, it can take months, if not years, for the United States to work out a trade agreement with another country. Many of the remaining trade barriers on U.S. goods are there for a reason \u2014 such as to protect a key local industry in a country or in response to a separate barrier the United States has put up to protect its own goods.
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a long, drawn-out negotiation,\u201d said Warren Maruyama, who worked on trade deals during the George W. Bush administration as general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. \u201cYou could hope that your trading partner is stupid and will agree to a bad deal. But, for the most part, most foreign trade negotiators are quite good, and it\u2019s typically a pretty brutal head-to-head negotiation between two sophisticated countries who have been doing trade deals for decades.\u201d
The increased tensions Trump has injected in recent weeks could also be adding to the complexities U.S. officials face when they sit across from their foreign counterparts, who may feel they don\u2019t have a clear understanding of what the United States is offering, where its red lines are or what it is trying to achieve from a trade agreement.
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be a challenge for a number of our trading partners, who feel like they are negotiating with a gun to their heads and negotiating with an administration that is not reliable,\u201d said Alex Jacquez, who worked for the National Economic Council during the Biden administration.
\u201cYou are just negotiating in a climate in which you do not know what your counterpart wants at the end of the day or is going to do in the interim,” Jacquez said. “And so there\u2019s not much of an incentive to come to the table if you are just going to get whacked for doing so.\u201d
Still, U.S. officials say they are close to making additional deals over the next month. Reuters reported that by Wednesday, the Trump administration wants countries to submit their best trade proposals, including offers to purchase U.S. industrial and agricultural goods, to speed along negotiations, according to a draft letter to negotiating partners Reuters said it had reviewed.
\u201cProductive negotiations with many key trading partners continue at a rapid pace. It is in all parties\u2019 interest to take stock of progress and assess any next steps,\u201d an official with the trade representative\u2019s office said in response to the report.
Still, 60 days in, just one tentative trade agreement has been reached, with the United Kingdom, though nothing yet has officially been formalized. And Trump suggested last month that he may just send out letters informing most countries of their tariff rates after the 90-day pause because the United States lacks the bandwidth to negotiate with each country individually.
Here’s where things stand now.
Last month, Trump said he was pausing the massive tariffs he\u2019d imposed on China since April for 90 days, after top U.S. and Chinese officials agreed at a meeting in Switzerland to discuss their trade concerns and de-escalate tensions.
Cracks in that detente began to appear just a week after the tariff pause. Chinese officials accused the United States of undermining the trade truce they\u2019d reached after the U.S. Commerce Department warned companies about using Chinese chips, including those by chipmaker Huawei Technologies. Chinese officials said the guidance was \u201cdiscriminatory\u201d and \u201cmarket distorting.\u201d
Last week, Trump accused China of not holding up its end of the truce, posting on social media: \u201cEverybody was happy! That is the good news!!! The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!\u201d
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in an interview on CNBC last week that the Chinese had been \u201cslow rolling\u201d an agreement made in Switzerland to unwind non-tariff retaliatory countermeasures it had put in place, like restrictions by the Chinese on shipments of rare earth metals.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday on CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation\u201d: \u201cWhat China is doing is holding back products essential for industrial supply chains in India and Europe. That is not what a reliable partner does.\u201d
The United States and the E.U. have been in a tariff tit-for-tat since shortly after Trump\u2019s second term began \u2014 with Europe at one point threatening a 50% tariff on American whiskey and Trump threatening a 200% tariff on European wines. Trump has accused the E.U. of treating the United States \u201cvery badly\u201d over the years and of being created to \u201ctake advantage\u201d of the United States.
The two sides began talks on a trade agreement in April after Trump paused his so-called reciprocal tariffs of 20%. But on May 23, the day U.S. and European trade officials were set to meet in Washington, Trump threatened on social media to levy a 50% tariff on European goods, saying the bloc wasn\u2019t moving fast enough toward a deal. He declared it was \u201ctime that we play the game the way I know how to play the game.\u201d
Days later, Trump backtracked on the threat, delaying the tariffs until July 9, after a phone call with his E.U. counterpart. Greer characterized the move as having a \u201cfire lit\u201d under the E.U. and said it now knows \u201cexactly what we want.\u201d
But as things seemed to be getting back on track, Trump threw another wrench into talks, saying at a steel mill event Friday that he would increase tariffs on steel and aluminum, including from Europe, to 50% from the 25% he had already imposed.
The E.U. said that the higher tariff on steel \u201cundermines ongoing efforts to reach a negotiated solution\u201d and that officials were preparing to impose their own countermeasures.
\u201cThis decision adds further uncertainty to the global economy and increases costs for consumers and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,\u201d an E.U. spokesperson told NBC News<\/a>.
The United States and Japan have been through at least four rounds of trade talks in recent months without settling on any sort of agreement. In the most recent meeting, Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met last week for just over two hours with Japan\u2019s economy minister, Ryosei Akazawa.
Afterward, Akazawa said it would be difficult for the two sides to reach any agreement without the United States\u2019 being willing to remove Trump\u2019s tariffs, which include a 10% tariff on all products and 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum.
\u201cIf that is not possible, then it will be difficult for us to agree to a deal,\u201d Akazawa told reporters after the meeting.
U.S. officials said they \u201chighlighted to Minister Akazawa the importance of addressing tariffs and non-tariff measures, increasing investment, and working together to address economic security and other issues of mutual concern.\u201d
The two sides said they would meet again before the Group of Seven summit starting June 15, which both Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will attend.
Shannon Pettypiece is senior policy reporter for NBC News.
Rob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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