美国贸易代表谈对巴西301关税及对华关系

You were just on a panel and you said you have an aversion to making news. I'm going to try. Nonetheless, I think there are a lot of folks wondering about Brazil in particular. As soon as this test case for the section 301 tariffs statutory deadline is today. Anything that you can say about the process and where it stands and what we can expect, it's today. So our section 301 investigations, they are legal investigations. We have two sets of hearings. We do two sets of public comments. And we're focused on unfair trading practices by Brazil. So we have to have a legal basis to do this. And there are all kinds of things that Brazil has been doing. They've been, you know, censoring our digital tech companies. Uh, they've been restricting our access, uh, for ethanol to their market. Uh, they've been actually engaging in illegal deforestation in the Amazon, which gives them a leg up on all the AG where they displace our ag exports to third countries. So there are a lot of things like this have been a problem for a long time with Brazil. So we've been investigating this. Uh, today we'll announce our final action. I had a conversation in a video conversation with my counterpart in Brazil last night. Very cordial. We've had intensive negotiations with them. I think there's still a lot of gaps between us, so we probably have to have some kind of action, but then continue discussions. I think expectation 25% in line with what you're thinking in terms of the range. Well, this is what was proposed by, uh, by my office, uh, at the president's direction. Uh, so this is this is probably what we're what we're looking at. Uh, again, I don't want to get ahead of the president. Uh, he's he's signing something today. I just got off the phone with him. Uh, and so we'll have more details to come. Uh, but again, I just want to emphasize this. These are unfair trading practices that Brazil has had in place against American exporters and workers for many years. The president is trying to resolve these, uh, and we're we're doing it by negotiation where we need to use leverage of tariffs. That's what we're allowed to do with section 301. We'll do that where it's necessary. Ask about Vietnam as well I understand Representative Vietnam that that in Washington meeting with your staff. Any update that you can give us on the status of those negotiations?

Uh, yes. So we have Vietnamese officials in Washington this week, uh, negotiating with all of the trade deals we've done over the past year and a half. All of them have had some core issues. Obviously tariffs. We want other countries to take down their tariffs, non-tariff barriers where they restrict U.S. exports of goods and services. Also things like economic security where if we're going to be shipping them some of our high tech equipment, they need to align with us on export controls and other things. So this is something we expect from the Vietnamese. And then there are things like, um, just basic standards of intellectual property and other things, the types of things that the rules that our, that our companies abide by, we want them to do so as well. So I have a separate investigation with Vietnam involving intellectual property because they've been a bad actor in this space. So these are the types of things intellectual property, economic security where we still have open areas of discussion. Switzerland's top trade diplomat told Bloomberg there's a good chance they'll get to a 15% deal, something stable. Can you confirm that the negotiations with Switzerland are going well?

I know, I know that that's what they want. I know that is the the substance of a framework agreement we agreed to a few months ago. One interesting thing with Switzerland, we've been very concerned with our trade deficit with Switzerland. But over the past 6 to 7 months, the United States is now in surplus with Switzerland and goods. So that's a really positive development. The Swiss are investing here in America. In fact, this week I'm going to visit a plant in Utah where they are producing railway equipment. It's a it's a Swiss company. They're coming here. They're bringing their apprenticeship programs. So the Swiss are doing a lot of the things they need to do to get right with the US. Negotiations are still ongoing, so I can't guarantee anything, but there's positive direction there. That's key about the sanctions bill, newly elevated after the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. Senator Richard Blumenthal said you've been involved in conversations about that. Is it in a place now that the white House that you in the white House are happy with?

So there are a lot of elements to this bill. There's a tariff element, there's a sanctions element, all of which are designed to give the president discretion, uh, to deploy, uh, pressure on Russia and those who are supporting Russia. So we've worked very constructively with the Senate on this. There are a lot of good things to be said about it. I just spoke with the president about it as well. So I think there's an openness there. I think we'll see it within the next couple of days. You know, final views from the president on on whether he wants to be supportive. I think that we have it in a in a pretty good place. Uh, I think it's meaningful that this is something that Senator Graham and I and Senator Blumenthal and others were working on up until his last days. Uh, and that that's meaningful as well. It would give the president the latitude to impose tariffs of up to 100%, as I understand it, on the largest importers of Russian oil. Any indication from him?

If he's prepared to do that, should this be passed? Well, I mean, I think, you know, when I talked to the president about this kind of issue, he wants to be careful about the way he deploys this kind of leverage. Um, geopolitics are very fragile. And this is something whether it's a tariff action or sanctions action or anything, it's something that the president thinks about very carefully. He certainly talks to me. He talked to Secretary, business Secretary Rubio. Secretary. He talks to everybody. He talked to people outside the government. He wants to he wants to hit the right spot of putting pressure on countries and putting pressure on Russia without creating more conflict or reducing the likelihood of a peace deal. Um, the section 122 tariffs set to expire in just a couple of days, really few days from now. July 28th July 24th. All but certain that the three one tariffs go into effect after that. Or are we looking at perhaps a lapse kind of in coverage?

I mean, the reality is the section 301 investigations I'm doing where we've proposed some tariffs. They're on their own track. Uh, we're moving quickly, uh, deliberately, because we want to resolve the unfair trading practices that we're targeting with these investigations. Uh, so we're going to do them as soon as we can to get at these practices, you know, whether they're, you know, day before, day of day after, that's less important to us than making sure we're addressing these unfair trading practices and getting the leverage in place. We need to resolve them. Do you have a timetable for when you're going to bring that report to the president, when you might see them enacted?

Well, well, we have a couple. Right. So so we have a section 301 on forced labor targeting countries who don't ban the import of forced labor goods. We do in America. Other countries don't. Some have a law, but they don't necessarily enforce it. So we already have our report out on that. And so we can take action I think fairly quickly on that. Within the next few weeks, we have another investigations targeting, uh, a more compact group of countries on structural access capacity. These are countries who have a typically have a big trade deficit with the world or a big, sorry, big trade surplus with the world or a big trade surplus with us. Or even if they don't, they may have practices that generate, you know, factories o