Trump is getting world economy he wants, but risk to growth exists

on Jul29
by | Comments Off on Trump is getting world economy he wants, but risk to growth exists |

By JOSH BOAK and PAUL WISEMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is getting his way with the world economy.

Trading partners from the European Union to Japan to Vietnam appear to be acceding to the president’s demands to accept higher costs — in the form of high tariffs — for the privilege of selling their wares to the United States. For Trump, the agreements driven by a mix of threats and cajoling, are a fulfillment of a decades-long belief in protectionism and a massive gamble that it will pay off politically and economically with American consumers.

On Sunday, the United States and the 27-member state European Union announced that they had reached a trade framework agreement: The EU agreed to accept 15% U.S. tariffs on most its goods, easing fears of a catastrophic trans-Atlantic trade war. There were also commitments by the EU to buy $750 billion in U.S. energy products and make $600 billion in new investments through 2028, according to the White House.

“We just signed a very big trade deal, the biggest of them all,” Trump said Monday.

But there’s no guarantee that Trump’s radical overhaul of U.S. trade policy will deliver the happy ending he’s promised. The framework agreement was exceedingly spare on details. Most trade deals require months and even years of painstaking negotiation that rise and fall on granular details.

High-stakes negotiations break Trump’s way

Financial markets, at first panicked by the president’s protectionist agenda, seem to have acquiesced to a world in which U.S. import taxes — tariffs — are at the highest rates they’ve been in roughly 90 years. Several billion in new revenues from his levies on foreign goods are pouring into the U.S. Treasury and could somewhat offset the massive tax cuts he signed into law on July 4.

Outside economists say that high tariffs are still likely to raise prices for American consumers, dampen the Federal Reserve’s ability to lower interest rates and make the U.S. economy less efficient over time. Democrats say the middle class and poor will ultimately pay for the tariffs.

“It’s pretty striking that it’s seen as a sigh of relief moment,” said Daniel Hornung, a former Biden White House economic official who now holds fellowships at Housing Finance Policy Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But if the new baseline across all trading partners is 15%, that is a meaningful drag on growth that increases recession risks, while simultaneously making it harder for the Fed to cut.”

The EU agreement came just four days after Japan also agreed to 15% U.S. tariffs and to invest in the United States. Earlier, the United States reached deals that raised tariffs on imports from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and the United Kingdom considerably from where they’d been before Trump returned to the White House.

More one-sided trade deals are likely as countries try to beat a Friday deadline after which Trump will impose even higher tariffs on countries that refuse to make concessions.

Trump’s long-held theory now faces reality

The U.S. president has long claimed that America erred by not taking advantage of its clout as the world’s biggest economy and erecting a wall of tariffs, in effect making other countries ante up for access to America’s massive consumer market.

To his closest aides, Trump’s use of tariffs has validated their trust in his skills as a negotiator and their belief that the economists who warned of downturns and inflation were wrong. Stocks rose slightly on Monday morning on tariffs that once seemed unthinkably risky.

“Where are the ‘experts’ now?” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on X.



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