Trump hints at openness to China tariff deal: ‘We are waiting for their call’ – US politics live
Trump: ‘We are waiting for China to call’
Just to highlight that in that post on Truth Social regarding his call with South Korea’s acting president, Trump said at the end that he is waiting for China to call to begin trade negotiations. Here’s that part:
China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started. We are waiting for their call. It will happen!
Key events
South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, said his country would not band together with other countries such as China to push back against the tariffs imposed by President Trump.
“I don’t think that kind of fighting back will improve the situation dramatically,” he said in an interview with CNN. “I don’t think it will be really profitable for the three of us, and especially for Korea.” He added that South Korea “clearly would like to negotiate” with Washington.
Marina Dunbar
Trade Representative Jamieson Greer defended the Trump administration’s decision to apply a 10% tariff on Australia despite a free trade agreement, citing the country’s ban on imports of US beef and pork.
“We should be running up the score in Australia,” Greer said at today’s hearing. “Despite the agreement, they ban our beef, they ban our pork.”
Greer also told senators that negotiations with nations seeking to lower the reciprocal tariffs announced by President Trump last week would proceed country by country.
Greer claims – after first dodging the question – that it will be companies that are heavily reliant on imports from China and Asia more widely, rather than ordinary Americans, that will bear the burden of the “short-term pain” resulting from Trump’s tariff policy.
Back at Greer’s Senate hearing, he was asked to speak to Australia denying the US access to it’s huge market in beef as a result of [you guessed it] “non-tariff barriers to trade”.
Greer says yes, the US imports a lot of beef from Australia whereas Australia doesn’t take any.
He also highlights US pork, which, he says, Australia blocks “based on specious fake science grounds”.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent says he expects a couple of big deals ‘very quickly’ on tariffs
Earlier this morning, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said he expected a couple of big deals “very quickly” in relation to Donald Trump’s latest tariff announcement.
NewsNation reports that Bessent told reporters:
We have one of the Vietnamese officials coming in this week, the Japanese are very eager to get over, and I think you’re going to see a couple of big trading partners make deals very quickly.
His comments saw stocks rally at the Wall Street open as traders appear to be hoping that some of the tariffs announced last week will be negotiated away, as some countries call the White House to agree to talks.
Exceptions or exemptions to tariffs not expected in the near term, says US trade representative Greer
Back at Greer’s Senate hearing, Greer says exemptions to Donald Trump’s global tariffs are not expected in the near term.
The president has been clear, again, that he’s not doing exemptions or exceptions in the near term.
Greer said that “Swiss cheese” in the process would undermine the goal of trade reciprocity.
The trade representative, who oversees the implementation of the tariffs, also said there is no particular timeline for trade negotiations.
Hugo Lowell
Away from Greer’s Senate hearing for a moment.
Mike Howell, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s so-called oversight project, is expected to advance an inflammatory conspiracy theory before the Senate judiciary committee that pardons signed by Joe Biden are invalid because they were signed by autopen.
The snipe will be targeted at Senator Adam Schiff, who received a pre-emptive pardon over his work on the House committee investigation into the January 6 Capitol riot that Howell will say is void, a person familiar with the matter said.
In alleging that Schiff’s pardon is invalid, Howell would elevate a conspiracy theory that has taken hold in Maga circles that the former president was too mentally impaired to sign pardons himself and unaware of what documents he was endorsing.
The autopen feature uses a real pen to copy a person’s actual signature. Presidents – including Trump – have used autopens for decades, and the justice department said in a memo two decades ago that presidents could direct an aide to “affix his signature” to bills.
But Howell, leaning into concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity, started a campaign last month to cast doubt on the legitimacy on the former president’s executive actions.
After the Missouri attorney general questioned in a letter whether Biden had the capacity to sign pardons and executive orders, Howell seized on the matter and sparked a rightwing frenzy with a conspiratorial post on X: “Whoever controlled the autopen controlled the presidency.”
Howell is expected to fan the flames of the idea that a deep state cabal was secretly running the country instead of Biden before the Senate judiciary committee, during a hearing into the Freedom of Information Act.
But there is no evidence that Biden did not have the mental capacity to sign executive actions – or that they were not authorized.
Greer tells senators that China has not indicated that it wants to work toward trade reciprocity.
Unfortunately, China for many years seems to be choosing its own path on market access. They elected to announce retaliation, other countries did not. Other countries have signaled that they’d like to find a path toward reciprocity. China has not said that and we will see where that goes.
Greer he is due to have a call with his Indian counterpart to discuss India’s “significant non-tariff barriers”.
Answering a question, Greer says, yes, he will try to include commitments on matters such as intellectual property, technical barriers to trade and science-based agricultural rules in his talks with India.
Greer says the administration is seeking more market access in Japan regarding agriculture and in terms of “structural impediments to some [US] industrial goods in terms of standards and regulations”.
Greer says nearly 50 countries, including Argentina, India, Vietnam and Israel, have approached him personally to discuss Trump’s tariffs policy and start negotiations to reduce their tariffs on the US.
US trade representative Jamieson Greer testifies on Donald Trump’s trade and tariff policies before Senate committee
US trade representative Jamieson Greer has been testifying on Donald Trump’s trade and tariff policies before the Senate finance committee.
Greer said Trump imposed tariffs to address the “emergency” of the “massive” US trade deficit. He calls the deficit “an economic and national security emergency”, adding: “We can’t ignore it.”
He cited “higher tariffs imposed by other countries on the US, as well as the effect of [there’s that phrase again] non-tariff measures that promote other countries’ exports and obstruct US exports, and other foreign economic policies favoring over-production and degrading America’s manufacturing capacity”.
He said it was “common sense” to focus on these “indicators” of “non-reciprocal trading conditions”.
As an example he cited trade in shellfish with the EU. “The EU can sell us all the shellfish they want,” he says, “but the EU bans shellfish from 48 states. The result is a trade deficit in shellfish with the EU”
An update from Reuters on the Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud’s visit to Washington today – the official visit is aimed at planning Donald Trump’s expected trip to the kingdom later this spring, a source close to the Saudi royal court told the news agency.
Prince Faisal would also discuss Gaza and the status of Yemen’s Houthis during meetings with US government officials, the source said.
The trip was scheduled before last week’s US tariffs announcement, the source added.
Reuters reports that Trump plans to visit Saudi Arabia as early as May to sign an investment agreement in what will be the first foreign trip of his second term, with stops also planned in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Trump made Saudi Arabia and Israel the initial stops on his inaugural foreign trip during his first term in 2017.
In a meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, Trump once again raised his highly controversial proposal for the US to take control of Gaza. The plan has been globally condemned, including by Saudi Arabia.
In Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia to the south, the US has launched airstrikes against the Iran-aligned Houthis in an effort to force an end to the group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The airstrikes are the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since Trump took office in January.
