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President Trump\u2019s plan to impose sweeping tariffs on most of America\u2019s trading partners has governments across the globe racing to schedule phone calls, send delegations to Washington and offer up proposals to lower their import taxes in order to escape the levies.<\/p>\n
On Monday, European officials offered to drop tariffs to zero on cars and industrial goods imported from the United States, in return for the same treatment. Israel\u2019s prime minister was expected to personally petition Mr. Trump on Monday in meetings at the White House. Vietnam\u2019s top leader, in a phone call last week, offered to get rid of tariffs on American goods, while Indonesia prepared to send a high-level delegation to Washington, D.C., to \u201cdirectly negotiate with the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Lesotho, the tiny landlocked country in Southern Africa, was assembling a delegation to send to Washington to protest the tariffs on its exports to the United States, which include denim for Calvin Klein and Levi\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump and his advisers have given mixed signals on whether the United States is willing to negotiate. On Sunday, Mr. Trump said that the tariffs would remain in place until U.S. trade deficits disappeared, meaning the United States is no longer buying more from these countries than it sells to them. But the administration still appeared to be welcoming offers from foreign nations, which are desperate to try to forestall more levies that go into effect on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
On Monday, as markets recoiled for a third day and Mr. Trump threatened even more punishing tariffs on China, the president said that \u201cnegotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCountries from all over the World are talking to us,\u201d the president wrote on Truth Social on Monday morning. \u201cTough but fair parameters are being set. Spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate!\u201d<\/p>\n
The turmoil in the stock markets since the president announced tariffs last Wednesday has prompted speculation that the president might be willing to strike some deals to roll tariffs back. On NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Sunday, Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, predicted that tariffs would be \u201ca short-term issue while the negotiations are actually happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think once the president starts announcing some negotiations in some different countries we\u2019ll start to see the market calm, and we\u2019ll start to see the rates come down pretty quickly,\u201d Mr. Lankford said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But both Mr. Trump and many of his advisers have downplayed the prospect of any immediate changes. On Sunday night, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he would not reverse tariffs on other nations unless the trade deficits that the United States runs with China, the European Union and other nations disappeared.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cHundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One. \u201cAnd unless we solve that problem, I\u2019m not going to make a deal.\u201d He added that he was \u201cwilling to deal with China, but they have to solve their surplus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tariffs that go into effect Wednesday range from 10 percent to 40 percent on nearly 60 countries. They are calculated<\/a> based on the U.S. trade deficit with each country and will be added to a 10 percent global levy that went into effect on Saturday.<\/p>\n Some countries \u2014 like Europe and Canada \u2014 have threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods, while others have decided to hold off to avoid Mr. Trump\u2019s ire. On Monday, Mr. Trump responded angrily to China\u2019s decision to retaliate and said he would impose \u201cadditional tariffs on China of 50 percent, effective April 9.\u201d<\/p>\n Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, reiterated a threat of retaliatory tariffs Monday even as she proposed dropping some tariffs between the United States and Europe to zero. \u201cWe are also prepared to respond through countermeasures, and defend our interests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Lai Ching-te, Taiwan\u2019s president, said in a video address on Sunday night that Taiwan had no plans to retaliate with tariffs. He added that investment commitments made by Taiwanese companies to the United States would not change as long as they remained in the national interest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Across Asia \u2014 where Mr. Trump has targeted some of his harshest levies and where factories specialize in making electronics, auto parts and shoes for the United States \u2014 leaders have been offering to strike deals and working to set up meetings with Mr. Trump. The tariffs are a particular threat to multinational companies that have relocated factories from China to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in recent years, after Mr. Trump opened a trade war with China in his first presidency.<\/p>\n On Monday, the trade secretary of the Philippines said the country would reduce tariffs on goods coming from the United States and meet \u201csoon\u201d with the U.S. economic team. The leader of Cambodia \u2014 which faces the highest tariff rates of any Asian country, at 49 percent \u2014 sent a letter to Mr. Trump on Friday, saying it was reducing tariffs on 19 categories of American imports immediately. Thailand, which is facing tariffs of 36 percent on its exports, expressed its \u201creadiness to engage in dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n In Vietnam, where many people had been expecting tariffs of around 10 percent, the announcement of 46 percent tariffs came as a blow. Vietnam\u2019s deputy prime minister, Ho Duc Phoc, was scheduled to leave Sunday for a trip to the United States with a delegation that included executives with the country\u2019s two main airlines, which have been promising to buy Boeing aircraft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Vietnam\u2019s trade ministry asked the Trump administration to suspend the 46 percent tariff, and requested a phone call with the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, \u201cas soon as possible,\u201d according to a statement on the government\u2019s website.<\/p>\n In a call with Mr. Trump last week, Vietnam\u2019s top leader, To Lam, promised to slash tariffs to zero on liquefied natural gas, cars and other U.S. goods coming into the country, and suggested his counterpart do the same, according to a statement from the Vietnamese government.<\/p>\n \u201cJust had a very productive call with To Lam, who told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S.,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday morning. <\/p>\n But speaking on CNBC Monday this morning, White House trade counselor Peter Navarro said Vietnam\u2019s offer to lower tariffs would not be enough to convince Mr. Trump to back off given concerns about other barriers, beyond tariffs, that countries use to block American exports, like taxes or regulations.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they come to us and say, we\u2019ll go to zero tariffs, that means nothing to us, because it\u2019s the nontariff cheating that matters,\u201d Mr. Navarro said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Navarro also urged the European Union to drop barriers like its value-added taxes, which Trump officials claim discriminate<\/a> against the United States. \u201cYou steal from the American people every which way is possible. So don\u2019t just say we\u2019re going to lower our tariffs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who along with Mr. Greer was put in charge of negotiations with Japan, sent a very different message in an interview late Monday, saying that Mr. Trump was ready to negotiate.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump, as you know, is better than anyone at giving himself maximum leverage,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cAnd at a point, President Trump will be ready to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n In Japan, where stock markets fell<\/a> by more than 7 percent Monday, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said he would be willing to meet with Mr. Trump to discuss the levies and would stress to Mr. Trump that Japan \u201cis not doing anything unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n Japan\u2019s trade minister, Yoji Muto, did not hide his disappointment over the tariffs. He told reporters that he had immediately held \u201can online meeting\u201d with Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, to tell him the \u201cunilateral tariff steps were extremely regrettable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe Ishiba government would prefer to negotiate rather than escalate,\u201d said Tobias Harris, founder of Japan Foresight, a firm that advises clients on Japanese politics. \u201cIt is struggling to determine with whom it can negotiate, if anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Muto had traveled to Washington last month as the tariffs loomed for urgent talks with Mr. Lutnick. Mr. Muto argued for Japan to be given an exemption based on the roughly $1 trillion that his nation has invested in the United States, including in huge automobile plants built by Toyota and other Japanese automakers.<\/p>\n South Korea\u2019s trade minister, Cheong In-kyo, also planned to visit Washington this week to try to lower the blanket 25-percent tariff Mr. Trump imposed on goods from South Korea. Mr. Cheong is expected to meet with Trump administration officials, including Mr. Greer, to express concern about the new duties and seek ways to minimize their impact on South Korea\u2019s export-driven economy.<\/p>\n European officials have also been flocking to Washington to try to negotiate. On Friday, the E.U. trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, met with his American counterparts via videoconference for what he described as a \u201cfrank,\u201d two-hour meeting<\/a>, and pledged that conversations would continue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Sefcovic has traveled to Washington repeatedly in recent weeks, but progress so far has been halting. E.U. officials who met with Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Greer had found that they were not prepared to negotiate before the tariff announcement on April 2.<\/p>\n European leaders have expressed a willingness to lower tariffs in some sectors and have dangled other potential carrots, like buying more American liquid natural gas and ramping up military expenditures. But they are also preparing to retaliate, hoping that hitting back with the power of the European economy will drive the United States to the negotiating table.<\/p>\n E.U. officials have spent the last several weeks refining a list of counter-tariffs that they plan to put into place starting on April 15. They sent the refined list out to member state representatives on Monday, and a vote on the list is expected on Wednesday.<\/p>\n While that initial wave of retaliation is in response to only steel and aluminum tariffs, policymakers have indicated that more is coming if negotiation fails. Some national officials are even open to hitting America\u2019s big technology companies with trade barriers, and E.U. policymakers have signaled that all options are on the table.<\/p>\n