U.S. May Exclude Sector-Specific Tariffs on April 2, Reports Say, But Situation Fluid

• Markets opened higher on Monday, March 24, powered by gains in U.S. stocks, while U.S. Treasury yields climbed after Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump's tariff plan may use a more targeted approach than previously thought, boosting risk appetite. Ahead of President Trump’s next big trade move, his administration invited companies to weigh in on the economic barriers they faced abroad.
• The list of complaints was both sprawling and specific. In hundreds of letters submitted to the administration in recent weeks, producers of uranium, shrimp, T-shirts and steel highlighted the unfair trade treatment they faced, in hopes of bending the president’s trade agenda in their favor. The complaints varied from Brazil’s high tariffs on ethanol and pet food to India’s high levies on almonds and pecans, to Japan’s longstanding barriers to American potatoes.
• Trump has promised to overhaul the global trading system on April 2, when he plans to impose what he is calling “reciprocal tariffs” that will match the levies and other policies that countries impose on American exports. The president has taken to calling this “liberation day,” arguing that it will end years of other countries “ripping us off.”
• The president had floated the idea of also announcing sector-specific tariffs on cars, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors that same day. On Monday, Trump said that he would be announcing tariffs on cars “very shortly,” as well as pharmaceuticals in the “not-too-distant” future.
• That said, Trump himself will ultimately determine the contents of the April 2 announcement. The action aims to shrink a US$1.2Tn global goods trade deficit by raising U.S. tariffs to levels charged by other countries and counteracting their non-tariff trade barriers.

(Sources: Reuters and the New York Times)