Source: Blog – Alliance for American Manufacturing
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And there’s a lot in it.
Donald Trump is back for his second term as president of the United States and he has hit the ground running, issuing a flurry of first-day executive orders from the Oval Office on everything from immigration to climate policy. Among them was an EO regarding trade policy, and there’s lots in it.
The order tees up potential tariffs by ordering many federal departments to examine persistent U.S. goods trade deficits, the results of which could be used for trade enforcement actions. It also calls for a review of existing export controls for sensitive goods, services, software and technology; reconsidering existing trade agreements to which the United States is a party; and the identification of countries that have export markets with which the U.S. can negotiate new agreements. The whole thing can be found here.
Here’s a partial list of what’s outlined in the order:
1. The U.S. Department of Commerce – with assistance from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) – will investigate the causes of trade deficits in goods, their economic and national security implications, and make recommendations (including the application of tariffs) to remedy them.
2. Treasury – with assistance from Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security – will map out the creation of an External Revenue Service to collect tariffs and “other foreign trade-related revenues.”
3. USTR – with assistance from Treasury, Commerce, and the White House’s senior advisor for trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro – will review “unfair trade practices by other countries” and recommend actions under various authorities.
4. USTR will start public consultations and assess the impact of the USMCA – the revision to NAFTA the Trump administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico during Trump’s first term – ahead of a scheduled 2026 review of that deal. USTR will make recommendations and report them to Congress.
5. Treasury will review the practice of currency manipulation among U.S. trading partners and recommend measures to counter it. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has long pointed out the role that currency manipulation has had in skewing trade balances, particularly in the U.S.-China relationship.
6. Commerce will review anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) regulations, examine transnational subsidies and “zeroing,” and consider modifications. AAM thinks our AD/CVD rules could be improved, which is why we’ve long endorsed the Leveling the Playing Field Act 2.0.
7. Treasury – with assistance from Commerce, DHS, USTR and Navarro – will assess revenue loss from goods imported under the de minimis rule and recommend modifications. Getting something done on de minimis reform, which allows billions of dollars of imports to enter the country un-inspected and duty-free, is long overdue.
8. USTR will review the Phase One Deal that President Trump reached with China during his first term, and make recommendations on additional China tariffs. “The investigation on China’s compliance with his Phase One deal should be easy,” pointed out AAM President Scott Paul on X. “They didn’t!”
9. USTR will review Section 301 tariffs against China, look at the issue of circumvention and make recommendations. These tariffs were enacted during Trump’s first term, then maintained and in some cases expanded by President Biden.
10. USTR and Commerce will look at Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for China. We have called for the revoking of China’s PNTR for some time; AAM’s Paul has published opinions about it and recommended doing so to Congressional committees.
11. Commerce – with assistance from the U.S. Department of Defense – will complete an economic and security review of the “industrial and manufacturing base” to assess import adjustments available under Section 232, a part of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 that allows the president to raise tariffs on excessive foreign imports found to be a threat to national security.
12. The White House – with assistance from Commerce, USTR, and Navarro – will look at exclusions and exemptions under Section 232 steel & aluminum and make recommendations. These tariffs were first implemented in 2018 to guard the steel and aluminum industries against a flood of unfairly traded imports and they worked extremely well.
13. Commerce will look at connected vehicles rules to look at “additional connected products.” Modern automobiles come loaded with cameras, microphones and other sensor arrays, and we shouldn’t allow imported vehicles to collect personal data and ship it back to potentially hostile foreign sources.
Suffice to say, Trump’s trade EO covers a lot of ground. And while nothing in it is instantaneous – there are no immediate tariff hikes, for example – most of the reports it orders are due April 1. Once those are in hand, the administration could begin to act on its assessments. That makes April 1 a day to mark on your calendar.
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