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      Trump’s Tariff Pause Is Less Than Meets the Eye

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      Presidents who make big changes in government policy usually lay their plans with care. They game out what might happen next. They sweat the little things. Richard Nixon did not just decide one morning to fly to China. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were the better part of a decade in the making. The details of Barack Obama’s expansion of health insurance emerged from countless public debates.President Trump prefers to shoot before aiming. Declaring that he intends to reboot America’s relations with the rest of the world, he has imposed tariffs on imports with abandon, demonstrating a disregard for the details or the collateral damage. His careless conduct of the public’s business has roiled stock and bond markets, threatened to cause a recession and damaged America’s global standing. The president’s decision-making has been so erratic that at one point this week, the administration’s top trade official was interrupted in the middle of testimony before Congress because the president had just changed the policy the official was defending.The original version of Mr. Trump’s plan, which he paused on Wednesday, imposed tariffs on foreign nations at rates that bore no apparent connection to America’s national interests. The highest tariff rate, 50 percent, applied to Lesotho, a tiny and impoverished nation in southern Africa.The latest version isn’t much better. Mr. Trump is imposing a 10 percent tariff on imports from most nations, along with higher rates on imports from America’s three largest trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China. The average tax on imports will rise to the highest level in more than a century, raising the prices on many consumer goods. The 145 percent maximum rate on Chinese imports is intended to isolate that nation economically, but the simultaneous tariffs on everyone else will undermine that goal. And while the stated purpose of all the tariffs is to expand American manufacturing, putting them in place immediately doesn’t give companies time to build factories. It will cause pain without any benefit.We want to emphasize that Mr. Trump has a point about the pain caused by free trade. The decades in which the United States threw open its doors to imports from other countries left many Americans without jobs and decimated the nation’s industrial heartland. Washington’s naïveté about China’s rise, accomplished partly through its own trade barriers and theft of intellectual property, is particularly regrettable.A revival of American manufacturing is a worthy goal. It would not heal past wounds, but it could provide a basis for future generations of Americans to build lives and to rebuild communities that are more prosperous and more secure.The price of cheap goods from ChinaDecrease in manufacturing employment caused by increased trade with China, 2000-19. More

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      New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee

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      A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less.A draft accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee.The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. It would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives, which is widely expected.The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit.“The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed for measures to clean up the maritime industry. “This will be first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.”The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Trump Upends Global Trade, Europe Sees an Opportunity

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      President Trump has big ambitions for the global trading system and is using tariffs to try to rip it down and rebuild it. But the European Union is taking action after action to make sure the continent is at the center of whatever world comes next.As one of the globe’s biggest and most open economies, the E.U. has a lot on the line as the rules of trade undergo a once-in-a-generation upheaval. Its companies benefit from sending their cars, pharmaceuticals and machinery overseas. Its consumers benefit from American search engines and foreign fuels.Those high stakes aren’t lost on Europe.Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, has spent the past several weeks on calls and in meetings with global leaders. She and her colleagues are wheeling and dealing to deepen existing trade agreements and strike new ones. They are discussing how they can reduce barriers between individual European countries.And they are talking tough on China, trying to make sure that it does not dump cheap metals and chemicals onto the European market as it loses access to American customers because of high Trump tariffs.It’s an explicit strategy, meant to leave the economic superpower stronger and less dependent on an increasingly fickle America. As Ms. von der Leyen and her colleagues regularly point out, the U.S. consumer market is big — but not the be-all-end-all.“The U.S. makes up 13 percent of global goods trade,” Maros Sefcovic, the E.U.’s trade commissioner, said in a recent speech. The goal “is to protect the remaining 87 percent and make sure that the global trade system prevails for the rest of us.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Autoworkers Union Chief Gives Trump’s Tariffs a Mixed Review

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      In an address to the U.A.W., Shawn Fain said a targeted approach could help bring jobs back to the United States, but he criticized universal duties.The head of the United Automobile Workers union voiced partial support on Thursday for the Trump administration’s tariffs, saying targeted duties on other countries could help bring some manufacturing jobs back to the United States.But the union’s president, Shawn Fain, described President Trump’s across-the-board global tariffs as “reckless.” In an address to U.A.W. members that was streamed on YouTube and other social media, he also strongly criticized the administration for firing federal workers and slashing key government agencies, and accused it of violating the civil rights of students and others.“We support use of some tariffs on automotive manufacturing and similar industries. We do not support tariffs for political games about immigration or fentanyl,” Mr. Fain said. “We do not support reckless tariffs on all countries at crazy rates.”The address appeared aimed at distancing the union leader from Mr. Trump. In previous weeks, Mr. Fain praised the White House’s tariff plans and faced some criticism for moving closer to an administration that often shows hostility to organized labor. He campaigned frequently and enthusiastically last year for former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, often rousing crowds by referring to Mr. Trump as a “scab.”“We are not aligning everything we do with the Trump administration,” Mr. Fain said on Thursday. “We are negotiating with the Trump administration.”Mr. Fain used the address to repeat familiar claims that free trade agreements — in particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement — allowed corporations to move U.S. factories and jobs to low-wage countries. He said some 90,000 factories in the United States closed in the last 30 years, hollowing out once thriving manufacturing cities like Flint, Mich., and Gary, Ind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Challenge to Trump’s Tariffs Funded by Groups Linked to Charles Koch and Leonard Leo

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      Among those opposed to President Trump’s tariffs on imports from China: a legal group funded by some of the biggest names in conservative politics.Last week, a Florida business owner challenged the Trump administration’s moves in court, arguing that her company, Simplified, which makes notebooks and planners, was harmed by the dramatic trade war with China that has only deteriorated further since the lawsuit was filed.Her lawyers are from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit that counts among its financial backers Donors Trust, a group with ties to the billionaire Leonard A. Leo, who is a co-chairman of the Federalist Society.The Federalist Society is an influential legal group that advised Mr. Trump through the confirmation of justices he appointed to form the current conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, though some in Mr. Trump’s circle came to believe that its leaders were out of step with the president’s political movement.Another donor to New Civil Liberties Alliance is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and Republican megadonor.In what appeared to be the first tariff-related lawsuit against the Trump administration, the founder of Simplified, Emily Ley, argued that President Trump overstepped his authority in February when he first imposed new import taxes on Chinese goods. Since then, China has retaliated with its own tariffs, and Mr. Trump has escalated the fight with more levies. All Chinese imports face a minimum tariff rate of 145 percent as of Thursday, a dramatic increase.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Tariff Reversal Calms Some G.O.P. Nerves, but Questions Linger

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      President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policy has prompted bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are outraged and Republicans are caught between their deep opposition to tariffs and fear of criticizing Mr. Trump.The president’s abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would halt most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days just a week after announcing them allayed the immediate concerns of some G.O.P. lawmakers, many of whom rushed to praise Mr. Trump for what they characterized as deal-making mastery.But behind those statements was a deep well of nervousness among Republican lawmakers who are hearing angst from their constituents and donors about the impact of Mr. Trump’s trade moves on the financial markets and the economy. Some of them have begun signing onto measures that would end the tariffs altogether or claw back Congress’s power to block the president from imposing such levies in the future.“I’m just trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke if it’s wrong, and who I put up on a platform and thank them for the novel approach that was successful if they’re right,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said of the sweeping tariffs on Tuesday during a hearing with Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official.On Wednesday, after Mr. Trump pulled back most of the tariffs but retained a 10 percent tariff rate for most countries and announced additional penalties on China, Mr. Tillis still sounded anxious. He said the move was likely to “reduce some of the escalation,” but added that there was still considerable work to be done to prevent another market meltdown.“We’ve got to get a deal before we get rid of uncertainty,” he told reporters soon after Mr. Trump announced the change in a social media post.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Southeast Asia, With Little Leverage, Seeks to Placate Trump on Trade

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      Southeast Asian leaders, their export-driven economies in peril, are trying to placate the president. “We may have to comply,” Thailand’s finance minister said.They were hit by some of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs, in one case as high as 49 percent. The new levies threatened to cripple their economies, which have prospered by making sneakers and tech goods for American consumers.So Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia and Vietnam rushed to appease Mr. Trump. They promised not to retaliate, unlike China and Europe. And they proposed to reduce or even eliminate their own tariffs on American imports.On Thursday, the region woke up to the good news that Mr. Trump had paused his “reciprocal” tariffs. The president suggested he had reversed course because of the market turmoil they had caused. Still, Southeast Asia is sticking with its conciliatory approach.In a statement on Thursday, the economic ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, said the 10-country bloc was “united in the opinion that retaliation is not an option.” (The ministers were in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a meeting that had been previously scheduled.)Despite Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause, the anxiety here is palpable. His tariffs, the Asean statement said, are “introducing uncertainty and undermining trust in the global trade system.” Millions of livelihoods in the region are on the line. Thailand’s finance minister, Pichai Chunhavajira, acknowledged that the White House had leverage over his nation in matters of trade.“This is how you negotiate,” Mr. Pichai said in an interview. “You start with an extreme measure and then ease your demand along the way. We may have to comply.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stocks Jump in Asia After Trump’s Tariff Reprieve

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      Markets in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan soar after the U.S. president pauses punishing tariffs. Gains in mainland China were modest as trade hostilities heat up between Washington and Beijing.Following President Trump’s decision to pause punishing tariffs on dozens of countries, markets in Asia reacted predictably: Stocks soared in the countries that were spared.In early trading on Thursday, benchmark indexes rose more than 9 percent in Taiwan, 8 percent in Japan and 5 percent in South Korea. All three Asian economies were among the U.S. trading partners given a 90-day reprieve from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs.While the U.S. allies won’t immediately face the 24 percent to 32 percent tariffs the Trump Administration had previously threatened, they will still be subject to a lower rate of 10 percent. That comes on top of 25 percent tariffs that Mr. Trump has imposed on goods including cars — a particular sore point for big auto exporters Japan and South Korea.In the United States, the reversal by Mr. Trump on Wednesday sparked the biggest one-day rally of the S&P 500 since October 2008, when stocks soared as investors anticipated central bank rate cuts in the wake of the global financial crisis.Huge Gains and Losses in One WeekModest gains or losses are the most common outcomes on S&P 500 trading days. But since last Thursday the index has had two steep drops and one of its biggest gains since 2000. More