More threats from Trump
China and India are also looking for ways to counter Trump’s customs levies, designed to boost American manufacturing.
“A select few countries should not have privileges based on their own interests, and the world cannot return to the law of the jungle, where the strong take advantage of the weak,” Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng cried at this month’s World Economic Forum.
In some cases, Trump has responded with more tariff threats, including a new 100% tariff on all Canadian goods if its neighbor reaches a trade deal with China.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney this month hailed a bilateral “new strategic partnership” in Beijing, touting a “preliminary but historic trade agreement” to reduce their mutual tariffs.
Carney’s visit “represented a fundamentally new approach to how Ottawa intends to navigate a more fragmented, controversial and uncertain world,” said Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of research and strategy at APF Canada.
However, he warned that it could risk being misinterpreted as “a softening of Canada’s assessment of the economic and national security challenges posed by China.”
Reinsch predicts that these latest agreements will leave the United States at a disadvantage in the long term, while noting that they are “surprisingly traditional.”
Negotiations on reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers are “exactly what the world has been doing for the last 75 years,” he said.
“The outlier is the United States,” he said.
