Trump’s trade chief says ‘deal’s a deal’ for economies with capped US tariffs

President Donald Trump’s trade chief signaled confidence the administration can roll out new tariffs without breaking terms of bilateral agreements, saying “a deal’s a deal” for economies like the European Union and Japan that negotiated caps on the US levies collected on their shipments.

The White House late Tuesday announced a proposal to hit 60 economies with import taxes of at least 10%, following a so-called Section 301 investigation into how trade partners handle goods allegedly produced by forced labor. That’s caused uncertainty for some trading partners including the EU, which hammered out an agreement on tariffs almost a year ago in Turnberry, Scotland.

“We understand that a deal is a deal,” Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, told reporters Thursday at the OECD in Paris when asked about the EU agreement. “We want to make sure that we are able to resolve the trading practices that are identified as problematic in our investigations and we’re going to take into account the Turnberry deal, of course.”

He added, “we believe that there’s room to accommodate that deal within the context of what we’re doing, provided that the European Union delivers on the Turnberry deal.”

The EU and US agreed to a free-trade deal in July that would see the bloc erase levies on US industrial goods in exchange for a 15% tariff ceiling on its exports. Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on European cars to 25% if the deal isn’t ratified by July 4.

The EU’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, repeated Greer’s language that a deal is a deal.