Tag: International Trade and World Market

Trump Prepares Yet Another Strategy to Resurrect Global Tariffs

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The Trump administration has cycled through trade law after trade law as it tries to find a sound legal basis to impose the steep tariffs on foreign products that President Trump wants. It is poised to try yet another approach. A global 10 percent tariff that Mr. Trump imposed in February after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier global tariffs is set to lapse at 12:01 a.m. on Friday. The administration has a new batch of tariffs ready to go to replace it, which could be announced as soon…

Tariffs Will Long Outlive Trump

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Donald Trump’s most consequential construction project may not be a ballroom or an arch, but his tariff wall. His latest threat to raise tariffs to 50 percent on some Canadian goods, as drastic as it is, is not nearly as significant as what’s coming next. By the end of this month, the administration is expected to introduce major tariffs on dozens of countries intended to ensure what once was a temporary regime lasts well beyond this presidency. Unlike most previous rounds of tariffs, including the ones just threatened on Canada,…

Russia Bill Broadens Sanctions but Could Fuel Fears Over the Dollar

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A Russia sanctions bill is posing a dilemma for the Trump administration: Lawmakers are pushing to wage further financial warfare just as the administration worries that heavy use of sanctions may erode the U.S. dollar’s supremacy. The bill, which was the brainchild of Senator Lindsey Graham before his death, aims to impose mandatory sanctions on Russia and its allies and potentially broaden the reach of penalties to include tariffs on buyers of Russian energy. The White House has said that the scope of the sanctions could broaden to include Iran…

The Quest for ‘Technological Sovereignty’ in Europe (and Why It’s So Hard)

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The French government said this year that it would replace Zoom and other American videoconference software with a French-developed alternative. Germany is building a homegrown platform for artificial intelligence. Companies in both countries are teaming up to build A.I. chips to rival those of the United States and China. These are modest steps in Europe’s high-stakes race to catch up to America and China in the global sprint for digital independence. Without it, Europe’s political and business leaders worry, they will be vulnerable to sudden losses of access to critical…

What Americans Need to Understand About China

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This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts. Since 2012, Xi Jinping has been the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. He has consolidated power to a level very few people ever expected, and under his rule, China has strengthened technologically, diplomatically and militarily. It is now widely understood to be an industrial juggernaut on a scale the world has never seen, in a way the world does not quite know how to respond to. But Xi’s…

Trump Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing Trade Investigation

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The lead investor in a South Korean aluminum company that has challenged Commerce Department penalties on certain exports from South Korea to the United States made a $2 million payment last year to President Trump’s holding company. The payment by the parent company, Base Group, was revealed for the first time in Mr. Trump’s annual financial disclosure form released in late June. The document offered only a cryptic explanation for the payment, stating that it was part of a “letter of intent” and a “nonrefundable development fee.” In statements to…

Shippers Face Deepening Dilemma as U.S. and Iran Vie for Control of the Strait

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Harry Vafias, a chief executive of a shipping company, recently got one of his vessels out of the Persian Gulf on a route protected by the U.S. military. But after Iran and the United States attacked each other this week, all but ending the truce the countries agreed to last month, Mr. Vafias, the head of StealthGas, based in Athens, said he was holding off on moving another ship through the Strait of Hormuz. “Things are becoming uglier by the minute,” he said in an email, “so we are not…

How Volkswagen’s Troubles Were Made in China

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Volkswagen has problems around the world, spurring it to announce on Thursday that it would slash the number of models it offers by as much as half, but many of its troubles can be traced to China. The German auto giant, the world’s second-largest carmaker after Toyota, led the pack in China, the world’s largest car market, for four decades. For many years, the company’s joint ventures and factories in China provided half or more of the company’s worldwide profits, which helped Volkswagen afford high salaries and generous benefits for…

America Was Being Played. The Bessent Doctrine Says Those Days Are Over.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered a remarkably important speech on June 23 at the Economic Club of New York. Yet neither Wall Street nor most of the economic profession seems to have paid it enough attention. By laying out what until now seemed more like haphazard policy measures, Mr. Bessent put down a marker for how the United States plans to operate in a changing global economic system. In the process, he elevated both the scale and the scope of a systemic change that started in earnest during President Trump’s…

U.S. Declines to Renew USMCA Trade Deal, Starting 10-Year Clock to Expiration

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The Trump administration on Wednesday declined to renew the trade deal President Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico in his first term, a pact that he later came to criticize. The decision, though expected, was an important symbolic move for a trade deal the United States is currently trying to renegotiate. The move started a decade-long clock to the deal’s expiration, unless the three countries unanimously decide to renew it. The text of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement required the three countries to jointly meet to review the agreement six years after…