The head of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said that Africans who are worried about the possible end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act should remember that it's not just their countries that are losing trade access.
Cecilia Malmstrom, a former top European Commission trade official, said the EU is "painfully aware that the transatlantic relationship as we used to know it has been severely damaged."
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, is leading a delegation to Ottawa this weekend. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who led the effort to end 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, and Sens. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., also are going.
More than 40 companies and trade groups, from businesses with 26 employees to one with 32,000, are asking that 25% Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum be applied to hundreds of "derivative" products made by foreign competitors.
If de minimis ends for all imports in July 2027, as proposed in the tax bill currently being considered in the House of Representatives, the U.S. Treasury would collect an additional $5.2 billion in the first full fiscal year after the change, mostly in tariffs, but including $231 million in customs user fees.
The American Association of Port Authorities, which represents 80 U.S. ports, told the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that adding a 100% tariff to ship-to-shore cranes made by Chinese companies or with Chinese components will increase costs for its members without creating domestic manufacturing.
Imposing tariffs on the European Union at the same time you're insisting that the continent spend more on its own defense undermines that request, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and two Democratic colleagues told the president in a letter last week. That's because even a 10% tariff on EU exports will stifle its economy, they argued.
Vice President JD Vance, meeting with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, said that "of course, we have some disagreements on things like trade," but that he hopes their conversation "will be the beginning of some long-term trade negotiations and some long-term trade advantages between both Europe and the United States."
The Commerce Department estimates that automakers will be able to save about $10 billion annually in tariffs on USMCA-qualifying cars, trucks and minivans imported from Canada or Mexico by submitting documentation to the International Trade Commission about the U.S. content in those vehicles. However, that estimate assumes that 25% tariffs on imported cars do not change the buying patterns of U.S. consumers, nor the production choices of automakers.
Five senators, both Republicans and Democrats, asked Jamieson Greer, then the U.S. trade representative nominee, to advocate for a formal exclusion process to tariffs, as was done for the Section 301 tariffs in Trump's first term. These written exchanges were recently posted at the Senate Finance Committee website, long after Greer's confirmation vote.