A snapshot of Trump’s trade disputes

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Earlier this week we published the latest edition of our monthly overview of trade agreements. The United States doesn’t only sign trade agreements, they also have a lot of trade disputes. The number of disputes seems to have gone up after Trump took office. The New York Times posted a great overview of his current trade disputes.

A Trade War with China

For the past 17 months, the world’s top two economies have been locked in the biggest global trade war since the 1930s.

The Trump administration accuses Beijing of cheating in its quest to become the world’s supreme leader in such cutting-edge industries as robotics and driverless cars. The administration, backed by many U.S. business groups, alleges that China steals technology, forces U.S. companies to hand over trade secrets as the price of admission to its vast market and unfairly subsidizes China’s tech companies while hogtying their foreign competitors in red tape.

A Trade War on non-U.S. Metals

Last year, Trump unsheathed a little-used weapon in U.S. trade policy — Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — to declare foreign steel and aluminum a threat to America’s national security. Using that justification, he imposed tariffs of 25% tariff on imported steel and 10% on aluminum.

A Trade War with NAFTA

Trump last year browbeat Mexico and Canada into agreeing to a rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But his version — the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA — still awaits approval from the U.S. Congress.

Read about the trade disputes in the article by the New York Times here.

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