The probes could result in fresh tariffs on imports from 16 major trade partners, including China and the European Union.

The probes could result in fresh tariffs on imports from 16 major trade partners, including China and the European Union.

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it will launch a wave of tariff-related investigations into more than a dozen U.S. trade partners, the next phase in Donald Trump’s sweeping global trade wars.

In a process that is likely to result in a fresh round of tariffs in the near future, the Office of U.S. Trade Representative is opening the formal probes into major trade partners that include the European Union, Mexico and China — each of which ranks among the top five sources of U.S. imports.

Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Japan and India will also be the targets of investigations under the trade statute known as Section 301.

  • panda_abyss
    10·
    16 days ago

    “These investigations will focus on economies that we have evidence appear to exhibit structural excess capacity and production in various manufacturing sectors, such as through larger, persistent trade surpluses or underutilized or unused capacity,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on a call with reporters Wednesday.

    “We expect that this investigation will uncover a variety of unfair trading practices,” Greer added.

    This test is just going to be the exact same bullshit, and is tautologically true for any product the US buys — because they’re able to buy it, hence a surplus.

    I liked the banana example from a few months ago. They’re going to find out the tropics have a massive structural banana and coffee surplus…