Trump using tariffs as negotiating tool

AlArabiya English

US President Donald Trump is supposedly using tariffs as a negotiation tool for countries to agree to his demands, economist Laurie Laird says.  #US #EU #Tariffs #Trump #WNews

Transcript

00:00Trump has paused tariffs on Mexico for a month.

00:03I want to know, do you think he's using tariffs

00:06as a blunt instrument basically to get countries

00:10to agree to his demands?

00:12Is this Trump's negotiating tool?

00:15Look, quite possibly.

00:16I'm not sure who is inside of Donald Trump's head,

00:19but what you're saying makes a great deal of sense

00:22for as much as we know.

00:23I mean, the fact that these tariffs were sort of dangled

00:26in front of trading partners for a while,

00:29sort of semi-announced on Friday, confirmed on Saturday,

00:33but not to take effect until midnight tonight, US time.

00:38So it certainly gives the sense that Donald Trump

00:40was open to some sort of negotiation.

00:43And in fact, with the wheeling back of the tariffs

00:46of Mexico until the end of the month,

00:49does show you that Trump is open to negotiation.

00:51And this is something from his playbook.

00:53This is something Donald Trump has done in the past.

00:57Throw something out there, get a trading partner.

01:00We saw it with Columbia just last week

01:03when Donald Trump was punishing the Colombians

01:06for not taking back some migrants.

01:09Throw something out there, clean up the mess,

01:11and then take credit for cleaning up the mess

01:13of your own making.

01:14It's a really interesting strategy.

01:17I think the other thing that's indicative

01:19of perhaps this was a negotiating ploy

01:22is that Donald Trump's treasury advisors

01:24have been pretty silent about the merit of these tariffs,

01:29at least over the past couple of days.

01:30Scott Besant, the new treasury secretary,

01:34thought to be one of the saner members,

01:36one of the more traditional members of the cabinet,

01:38has not been behind this.

01:41He has not been doing the television shows

01:43saying this is great for the US economy,

01:45which suggests the treasury isn't 100% behind Trump on here,

01:49which again may suggest that perhaps

01:51this was a negotiating ploy.

01:54So I think that's one of the things

01:55that's indicative of this.

01:57I think the other thing that's indicative

01:59of this is that the US government

02:00has not been behind this.

02:02It's not been behind this.

02:03It's not been behind this.

02:04It's not been behind this.

02:05It's not been behind this.

02:06It's not been behind this.

02:07It's not been behind this.

02:09It's not been behind this.

02:10It's not been behind this.

02:11It's not been behind this.

02:12It's not been behind this.

02:13It's not been behind this.

02:14It's not been behind this.

02:15It's not been behind this.

02:16It's not been behind this.

02:17It's not been behind this.

02:18It's not been behind this.

02:19It's not been behind this.

02:20It's not been behind this.

02:21It's not been behind this.

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