If the White House's confusing tariff rollout is going to gain some semblance of order, it might just come from an attorney and acolyte of President Donald Trump's first-term trade adviser Robert Lighthizer. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has largely been out of the public eye during Trump's first two months of market-roiling uncertainty around trade policy. Now Greer seems poised to help restore order ahead of the planned April 2 announcement of a tariff reset the administration is labeling as a "reciprocal" approach, Bloomberg reports from Washington. (Click here for the full story.) Trump himself is billing it as a big day — one that'll be "liberating" for a US economy which he says has been abused by major trading partners over the years. Read More: Trump's Tariffs Are Self-Sabotage, Australia Treasurer Says Under Greer, USTR has reinstated parts of a process that were missing from prior tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico, China and metals by asking for public comment on the reciprocal duties. That gives the trade office a formal way to receive feedback from businesses and other stakeholders. Trade lawyers see risk in Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act backing the North American and China tariffs, which he tied to drug trafficking and migration, as the legal basis for the reciprocal levies. If he does so, the duties could face lawsuits because they don't fit squarely in the law's description of a national emergency. QuickTake: Trump Is Promising Reciprocal Tariffs. What Are They? Discussions are ongoing about what exactly Trump and his team will announce early next month. One likely outcome is for USTR to create a formula for a single rate for each country based on that nation's average tariff level and other measures the Trump team considers discriminatory, according to Bloomberg's reporting. The rates, though, could be adjusted based on Trump's perception of whether a country has been cooperative or combative. 'The Dirty 15' Here's how Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described it early Tuesday during an interview with Fox Business: "What's going to happen on April 2, each country will receive a number that we believe that represents their tariffs. So for some countries it could be quite low. For some countries it could be quite high," he said, noting that he hasn't seen the numbers and the process is being run by USTR and the Commerce Department. Bessent said some of the tariffs "may not have to go on, because a deal is pre-negotiated." In other cases, he hoped, after a nation received its "reciprocal tariff number, that right after that, they will come to us and want to negotiate it down." He added that there's a sizeable number of countries where the US has a small trading surplus. "And then there's what we would call kind of the dirty 15, and they have substantial tariffs," Bessent said. —Brendan Murray in London Click here for more of Bloomberg.com's most-read stories about trade, supply chains and shipping. |
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