Donald Trump ‘actively’ considering 15 tariff deals with some nations, including Australia
The White House said President Trump is ‘actively’ considering bespoke tariff deals with those countries willing to negotiate as soon as possible, including Australia.
North America
Don't miss out on the headlines from North America. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The Trump administration has been presented with offers from at least 15 nations for bespoke trade deals following President Trump’s announcement last week of a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday.
“We’ve had more than 15 deals, pieces of paper, put on the table - proposals that are actively being considered,” Ms Leavitt said during her regular briefing, without specifying which nations had made the offers
The press secretary also clarified that no agreements had been finalised yet, but predicted deals should be happening “soon.”
“As we’ve said consistently, more than 75 countries have reached out,” Ms Leavitt explained. “So there’s a lot of work to do. We very much understand that, but we also believe that we can announce some deals very soon.”
A White House official told The New Post last week that India, Japan and Vietnam were likely to be among the first nations to come to a one-for-one trade understanding with the US.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is also prioritising quick agreements with Australia, South Korea and the United Kingdom, indicating a preference for US allies who expressed a desire to negotiate as soon a possible.
Mr Trump, 78, announced April 9 he was holding off on imposing steep duties on dozens of nations around the world until early July to allow his economic team extra time to work out agreements, promising at the time “a deal is going to be made with every one of them.”
Key players in the talks include Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, trade adviser Peter Navarro, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, with President Trump himself getting the final say.
“We’ve got everybody in the trade team, and even deputies of people in the trade team, talking to just about everybody on Earth, and I think that we’ve got more than 10 deals where there’s very good, amazing offers made to the US that Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Howard Lutnick and the rest of our trade team of the president are stewing over whether those deals are good enough,” Mr Hassett told Fox News.
TRUMP RIPS INTO CHINA OVER BROKEN BOEING DEAL
President Trump said Tuesday that China has gone back on a major Boeing deal, after a news report that Beijing ordered airlines not to take further deliveries of the US aviation giant’s jets.
“Interestingly, they just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will ‘not take possession’ of fully committed to aircraft,” said Mr Trump in a Truth Social post, referring to China as trade tensions flared between the world’s two biggest economies.
The US president said China bought only “a portion of what they agreed to buy,” charging that Beijing had “zero respect” for his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration.
China has told its airlines to stop taking deliveries of jets from American aviation giant Boeing, as the trade war between Beijing and the United States deepens.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the world’s two biggest economies have been locked in a tit-for-tat tariff war, with the US now charging levies of up to 145 per cent on imports from China.
Beijing has reacted furiously to what it calls unlawful “bullying” by Washington and has imposed retaliatory duties of 125 per cent on US imports, dismissing further hikes as pointless.
Bloomberg News reported that China had also ordered airlines to halt deliveries of Boeing planes, citing people familiar with the matter.
Beijing has also told its carriers to suspend purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from US companies, the financial news outlet reported the people as saying.
Boeing shares were around 1.5 per cent lower on Tuesday morning.
AFP has contacted Boeing and China’s foreign ministry for comment. Beijing’s reciprocal tariffs on US imports would likely have triggered significant rises in the cost of bringing in aircraft and components.
Bloomberg said the Chinese government is mulling helping carriers that lease Boeing jets and face higher costs.
Meanwhile, a major airline warned it may suspend Boeing deliveries over President Trump’s tariffs.
Ryanair may defer deliveries of new Boeing jets should fallout from the tariffs make them more expensive, chief executive Michael O’Leary told The Financial Times.
Mr Trump’s tariffs, including on key aircraft materials aluminium and steel, together with retaliatory levies risk impacting global supply chains, in turn hiking costs across sectors.
Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline by passenger numbers, is to start taking delivery in August of 25 Boeing planes.
“If tariffs are imposed on those aircraft, there’s every likelihood we may delay the delivery,” said the long-serving boss at the Irish no-frills carrier.
America’s Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian stood firm against the possibility that planes it is due to receive from European plane maker Airbus could become more expensive because of the tariffs.
“If you start to put a 20 per cent incremental cost on top of an aircraft, it gets very difficult to make the maths work,” he said in a conference call with analysts.
“But the one thing that you need to know, we’re very clear on, is that we will not be paying tariffs on any aircraft deliveries we take,” Mr Bastian said.
CHINA THREAT: ‘PEASANTS IN THE US WILL SUFFER’
A top Chinese official warned that President Trump’s “extremely shameless” tariff war would backfire soon leaving “those peasants in the US” wailing.
Xia Baolong, a senior Chinese official who oversees Hong Kong and Macao, lashed out over Mr Trump’s decision to slap a 145 per cent levy on goods from the region, calling the move “brutally unreasonable.”
“The US isn’t after our tariffs but our very survival,” Xia said in a televised speech. “The US has repeatedly contained and suppressed Hong Kong … and this will eventually backfire on itself.”
“Let those peasants in the United States wail in front of the 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation,” he added.
The official went on to say that bullying tactics like the ensuing tariff war had never worked on Chinese people, including those from Hong Kong.
“The Chinese people do not cause trouble, nor are they afraid of trouble. Pressure, threats and blackmail are not the right way to deal with China,” he said.
It comes as Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Malaysia on Tuesday for a highly anticipated state visit that comes as Beijing fights an escalating trade war with the United States.
Xi embarked this week on a Southeast Asia tour that has already taken him to Vietnam and will also include Cambodia, with Beijing trying to position itself as a stable alternative to US President Donald Trump’s punitive tariff regime.
POSSIBLE PROBE INTO INSIDER TRADING AROUND TRUMP TARIFFS
New York Attorney-General Letitia James’ office is scrutinising whether insider trading took place in connection with President Trump’s 90-day pause on customised “reciprocal” tariffs announced last week.
Shortly before the US markets opened April 9, with indexes in free fall over tariff uncertainty, Mr Trump declared on Truth Social that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY.”
That afternoon, the US president announced the postponement of the customised rates while keeping a 10 per cent baseline duty in effect on most imports.
The stock market rebounded sharply, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing 7.9 per cent, the S&P 500 surging 9.5 per cent, and the Nasdaq spiking 12.2 per cent.
The examination is in its preliminary stages and is not yet a fully-fledged probe, James’ office said.
It was not immediately clear whether specific individuals were subject to the review, which was first reported by CNN.
SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS SUE TRUMP
A coalition of small businesses has filed a lawsuit against President Trump, arguing that his recent wave of tariffs on foreign imports is unconstitutional and threatens the survival of American entrepreneurs.
The suit, filed in the US Court of International Trade, challenges President Trump’s legal authority to impose broad, unilateral trade barriers.
The plaintiffs also claim that Mr Trump’s justification is unfounded.
“His claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination: trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency,” the lawsuit continues.
“Nor do these trade deficits constitute an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat.’”
The legal action was brought by the Liberty Justice Centre, a conservative public interest law firm, on behalf of owner-operated companies from across the country.
The complaint alleges that Mr Trump’s reliance on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify sweeping tariffs violates the Constitution by bypassing Congress’s exclusive power to regulate commerce and impose taxes.
TRUMP WOULD ‘LOVE TO’ DEPORT US CRIMINALS TO NOTORIOUS JAIL
President Trump stepped up his threats to send Americans to foreign jails, saying he would love to deport “homegrown” US citizens who commit violent crimes to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.
Mr Trump raised the idea in talks on Monday with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele - the self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” who has already taken illegal migrants from the United States into his country’s jails.
“I call them homegrown criminals,” Mr Trump said according to excerpts of an interview with Fox Noticias.
“The ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat and push people into subways,” he added.
“We are looking into it and we want to do it. I would love to do it.”
Mr Trump said he had asked US Attorney-General Pam Bondi to examine the possibility of sending Americans to El Salvador.
Mr Bukele offered to take in prisoners from the United States shortly after Mr Trump’s inauguration for a second term, in exchange for a fee of US$6 million.
But Trump’s administration already faces pressure over the case of a migrant who was mistakenly deported from the US to El Salvador under the Bukele deal.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father who was living in the US state of Maryland — to the United States was deported after an “administrative error” and the US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return from the notorious jail.
But Trump officials insist he is an illegal migrant and a member of El Salvador’s violent MS-13 gang, despite never having been convicted.
TRUMP THREATENS TO STRIP DEFIANT UNI OF TAX BREAKS
President Trump has threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status after the elite US university refused to accept far-reaching policy changes ordered by the White House.
Mr Trump said Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity” if it does not submit to his demands for the college to change the way it runs itself, including selection of students and authority for professors.
Tax-exempt status is “totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST,” he added in the post on his Truth Social network.
In a letter to students and faculty, Harvard president Alan Garber had vowed to defy the government, insisting that the school would not “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.”
In response, Mr Trump moved to freeze US$2.2 billion of federal funds and US$60 million in government contracts.
President Trump wants Harvard to apologise for what his administration insists is the university’s tolerance of anti-Semitism, the White House said on Tuesday.
“And Harvard should apologise,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists.
More Coverage
Originally published as Donald Trump ‘actively’ considering 15 tariff deals with some nations, including Australia
Canada’s governing Liberals win election after Trump threat
Prime Minister Mark Carney has won the Canadian election after running a campaign dominated by Donald Trump’s trade war and annexation threats.
Bezos v Musk: Amazon launches Starlink rival
Amazon has launched the first batch of satellites for its internet network, Project Kuiper, in a bid to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink.