THE NEW YORK TIMES: Donald Trump’s trade offensive aims to settle score with countries, no matter their size

US President Donald Trump added Wednesday evening US time to his growing list of countries that would face steep tariffs in the coming weeks if they fail to reach trade agreements with the United States, as he threatens to drag nations large and small into his trade war.

On his social media account, the President posted form letters informing countries, including the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Brunei, Libya, Iraq and Algeria, that they should prepare for double-digit tariff rates. Except for the name of the country and the tariff rate, the letters were identical to those he posted Monday, which targeted 14 nations.

Later Wednesday afternoon, Mr Trump issued another threat to impose a 50 per cent tariff on products from Brazil. His letter implied that the higher rate was partly in response to what Mr Trump described as a “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for attempting a coup.

Later that evening, Mr Trump escalated his tariff plans further, saying he would begin imposing a 50 per cent tariff on imported copper as of Aug. 1. The President said he was taking action because copper, which the United States imports from Chile, Canada and other countries, is crucial for national defence.

The price of US copper futures has soared since Mr Trump mentioned he was planning a 50 per cent tariff during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

Brazil and the other trading partners that Mr Trump targeted Wednesday join a growing list of countries that will face additional tariffs Aug 1, including Japan and South Korea.

The President’s renewed threats against both large and small trading partners suggests that he is hewing to a global tariff strategy he announced in early April that punishes countries broadly for a variety of trading practices and policies he has deemed unfair.

In issuing his threat to Brazil, which was more sharply worded than the previous form letters, Mr Trump cited the country’s “insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to US Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market).”

As part of his attack, Mr Trump also directed his trade representative, Jamieson Greer, to begin investigating Brazil’s digital trade policies, which could result in further tariffs.

This week’s threats essentially seek to replace steep tariffs the President announced in April, when he singled out roughly 60 countries that sell more goods to the United States than they buy from it.

He said that those trade imbalances were evidence that foreign countries had long mistreated the United States, an assertion economists have criticised.

The President had originally set July 8 as the last day for countries to sign trade deals with the United States to avoid those tariffs. At the urging of some of his advisers, on Monday he pushed the deadline back to Aug. 1.

Many countries are racing to try to sign trade deals, including major trading partners like the European Union and India. In April, Peter Navarro, the President’s top trade adviser, promised to sign 90 trade deals in 90 days.

But it remains impractical for the United States to negotiate simultaneously with all of the countries the President has threatened with tariffs, something he acknowledged at the White House on Tuesday.

“We can’t meet with 200 countries,” he said.

Though some investors have doubted whether Mr Trump would follow through with his threats, the President insists that the August 1 deadline will not be delayed further. If that is the case, stiff tariffs will go into effect on imports from dozens of additional countries.

The President has also been weighing further tariffs on a variety of critical industries, including copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and lumber. The Administration appears to be finalising these actions, and some of those tariffs could come as early as the next few weeks.

In a meeting Wednesday with a group of African leaders at the White House, Mr Trump said that tariffs would be “a great thing for our country.”

“We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, hundreds of billions, and we haven’t even started yet,” he said. He added that the United States “really haven’t had too many complaints because I’m keeping them at a very low number. Very conservative.”

Mr Trump’s letters repeatedly mentioned the bilateral trade deficits that the United States runs with other countries, calling them “unsustainable” and “a major threat” to the nation’s economic security.

Some economists believe that the overall US trade deficit with the world is problematic, because it means that fewer factories in the US employ Americans. But many economists have criticised the President’s focus on the trade deficits with individual countries as a measure for US trading relationships.

Economists argue that bilateral deficits with various countries occur for all kinds of reasons. The most important is simply that foreign countries may specialise in producing certain products that Americans prefer to buy — cars, gold, chocolate — which is not something a foreign government can or would want to control.

It also seems unlikely that the United States could eliminate these trade deficits by encouraging foreign countries to buy American products. While such sales could help to partly balance trade and benefit US exporters, there’s little reason to think other countries would buy the same amount of products that the United States, often the wealthier country, demands from the rest of the world.

For example, the President has said that a trade deal between the United States and Vietnam would open Vietnamese markets and lead to sales of American vehicles.

“It is my opinion that the SUV or, as it is sometimes referred to, Large Engine Vehicle, which does so well in the United States, will be a wonderful addition to the various product lines within Vietnam,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

But analysts have pointed out that Vietnamese streets are much tinier than American ones, and the per capita annual income in Vietnam is only $4,000, about a tenth of the cost of a midsize SUV.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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