U.S. trade partners are buying up more American goods and trying to curry favor with president Donald Trump in an effort to stave off sweeping tariffs.
The administration is negotiating with more than 70 trading partners, many of whom are trying to eliminate the trade imbalances Trump says the tariffs are meant to even out, but it's not clear the spending spree – or other favors to him and his allies – will appease the president, who announced the reciprocal tariffs April 2 but agreed to pause them until July, reported the Wall Street Journal.
"Vietnam, which has a surplus of more than $120 billion with the U.S. and saw tariffs on its goods rise to 46% on Liberation Day, shows how anxious countries are to stave off the duties," the Journal reported. "It recently closed a $300 million financing deal to buy a fleet of new Boeing jets. It pushed through the authorization of Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by Elon Musk, a close Trump adviser. And it accelerated the approvals for a $1.5 billion Trump resort."
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Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has made Australia, India, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. his top priorities for an initial round of talks, but it appears the administration wants more than just a bonanza for American business and is instead seeking foreign investments in the U.S. and other measures to counter China's economic power.
“While splashy purchasing announcements are welcome, they are often short-lived,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade official. “It’s easier to implement a ‘buy more’ strategy than negotiating structural measures typically found in trade agreements.”
Trump has been urging India to buy more defense equipment from the U.S. and he has suggested the trade war with the European Union could be called off with the purchase of $350 billion more in American energy products, while Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to erase his country’s $7.4 billion trade surplus for goods with the U.S.
Other countries, however, cannot afford to increase their spending on American goods or eliminate trade imbalances with the U.S., but poorer countries like Cambodia and Zimbabwe could open their markets to U.S. agriculture products or ease data restrictions to benefit American tech companies.