The plan for other US trade deals is to keep 10% tariff floor – report

The source here is ‘Wall Street Execs’ so take it with a grain of salt but this isn’t a good sign:

BREAKING: Wall Street execs with contracts in the White House say the plan for trade deals on tap — India, Japan, South Korea and Australia— is to have tariffs at or around 10 per like UK. China, of course, is another story. Developing

I don’t seem many countries offering up concessions for the privilege of exporting with 10% tariffs. If anything, others are likely to retaliate. This helps to explain why progress with Japan quickly fell apart and why Trump is now looking to dictate trade deals.

It’s not a good sign but it’s also not clear if Congress will tolerate it for the longer term.

This is something we sniffed out at the beginning: That the high ‘reciprocal’ tariffs were some kind of opening-bid smokescreen to get countries to accept 10%. We’ll have to see if it works.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.