Senior US officials said US President Donald Trump’s tariff defeat at the US Supreme Court would not unravel deals negotiated with its partners as they sought to defend the administration’s assertive trade policies.
Those deals — which the administration made with partners including China, the EU, Japan and South Korea — remain in place, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Sunday.
He sought to separate those arrangements from the planned 15 percent global tariff Trump announced on Saturday.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals,” Greer said. “We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them.”
Friction over the renewed uncertainty spilled out Sunday as the European Parliament’s trade chief said he would propose freezing the EU’s ratification of a trade deal with the US until the Trump administration clarifies its policy. In New Delhi, officials cited similar reasons for India postponing talks in the US this week on finalizing an interim trade deal.
Greer suggested that alternative US trade tools, including those involving investigations of other countries’ trade practices, would give the US leverage.
“We have tariffs like this already in place on China, we have open investigations already,” he said, adding that he spoke with his EU counterpart over the weekend and would be talking with officials of other key US trading partners to reassure them.
“Rest assured, I’ve been speaking to these folks as well,” Greer said. “I’ve been telling them for a year — whether we won or lost, we were going to have tariffs, the president’s policy was going to continue.”
“That’s why they signed these deals even while the litigation was pending,” he said.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm in Brussels, said it wants “full clarity” on the Trump administration’s next steps.
“A deal is a deal,” the bloc’s executive arm said, adding that it expects the US to honor its commitments under a trade deal signed in August last year.
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said it is “critically important” for global trade to “have clarity” from the US administration.
“I hope it’s going to be clarified, and it’s going to be sufficiently thought through so that we don’t have, again, more challenges and the proposals will be in compliance with the constitution, in compliance with the law,” Lagarde said.
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said the US was in contact with its foreign trading partners “and they like the tariff deals.”
“So you know, they’re not going to be changed,” he said.
Greer signaled that US trade partners should not count on tariff relief based on the Supreme Court ruling.
He said the 15 percent global tariff that Trump announced on Saturday is “roughly equivalent to the types of tariffs that we had in place” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the tool that the court ruled Trump could not use for tariffs.
“The reality is, we want to maintain the policy we have, have as much continuity as possible,” Greer said.
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