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President Donald Trump said he would set tariff rates for U.S. trading partners "over the next two to three weeks," noting his administration lacks the capacity to negotiate deals with all of its trading partners.
Trump said Friday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick "will be sending letters out essentially telling people" what "they'll be paying to do business in the United States."
"I think we're going to be very fair. But it's not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us," the president said during a meeting with business executives in the United Arab Emirates.
The U.S. president asserted there are "150 countries that want to make a deal." He didn't say how many, or which, nations would receive letters. The countries that get them "could appeal it," Trump added, without explaining how that process would work.
The White House and Commerce Department didn't immediately respond to requests for comment overnight in the U.S.
Trump announced higher tariffs on dozens of trading partners on April 2, but later paused them for 90 days amid investor panic to give foreign governments time to negotiate. Yet the president in recent weeks has moved away from the idea he would engage in a back-and-forth with every partner.
While the Trump administration is prioritizing trade talks with more than a dozen nations, a lack of manpower and capacity makes it impossible to hold concurrent negotiations with all the countries caught up in the president's reciprocal tariffs plan.
Tariffs are charged at the border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but the extra costs are often passed on in part or full to consumers.
Earlier this month, Trump said he would simply dictate tariff levels for many nations looking to avoid higher duties.
Negotiations are still ongoing with several trading partners, including Japan, South Korea, India and the European Union. Trump recently agreed to a trade framework with the U.K. and to a mutual temporary tariff reduction with China to buy more time for talks.
The U.S. president said Thursday that New Delhi made an offer to drop tariffs on U.S. goods, a proposal that the Indian government did not confirm.
"We have four or five other deals coming immediately," Trump said on May 9, as he touted his U.K. blueprint. "We have many deals coming down the line. Ultimately, we're just signing the rest of them in."
JAPAN
Holding longer-term Treasuries and importing Japanese cars manufactured in the U.S. are among the possible bargaining chips for Tokyo in its talks with Washington about Trump's sweeping tariffs, according to the leader of a small but influential opposition party.
Yuichiro Tamaki, head of the Democratic Party for the People, said in an interview Thursday that Japan could offer to reinvest proceeds from maturing U.S. Treasury holdings into longer bonds in return for concessions on tariffs.
Given that Japan is holding over $1 trillion in U.S. debt, reinvesting that into longer bonds would be "a tremendous source of support," he said, adding that "the U.S. government does appear to be concerned about the interest rate on long-term U.S. bonds."
Tamaki also indicated that Japan's policymakers will need to take action to shield the economy from the impact of the levies, suggesting a sales tax reduction and a more flexible approach on reducing the central bank's domestic bond purchases.
The suggestions were made as the DPP's soaring popularity ahead of an upper house election this summer allows it to wield out-sized influence on Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's minority government. Ishiba's administration must deal with smaller parties to execute policy on the one hand, while negotiating a trade deal with the U.S. on the other.
Tamaki also said easing safety restrictions on imports of cars produced in the U.S. by Japanese automakers could be a bargaining chip that would increase jobs in the U.S. and close the U.S.-Japan trade deficit, while minimizing the impact of the tariffs on Japanese car companies.
"Japanese cars that are made in America, by Americans, and are produced with the employment of Americans -- I think it would be good to be able to count such cars as an expansion of exports from America," he said.
The difference in safety restrictions in the U.S. and Japan is a snag for re-imported cars that could be revised on the Japanese side, he added. He said that a large Japanese automaker was on board with the idea but declined to give further details.
While countries such as the United Kingdom and China have reached some broad agreements with the U.S. on reducing levies, Japan is still negotiating a deal seeking a full exemption from all tariffs. Tokyo is looking for the scrapping of the 25% tariff on cars, auto parts, steel and aluminum, and a separate 24% across-the-board levy that has temporarily been reduced to a baseline 10% levy as negotiations continue.
Local media have reported that the next delegation could visit the U.S. as soon as late next week to continue talks.
Tamaki also said temporarily cutting the 10% sales tax to support the economy would be one way to provide support to an economy hit hard by the U.S. tariffs. A gauge of consumer confidence fell in April to the lowest in almost two years.
"I thought maybe we don't really need to push for tax cuts given how wage negotiations were going earlier this year, but the tariffs imposed in early April added a lot of uncertainty to the future," he said, saying that the DPP was now floating the idea of tax cuts again as a way to deal with the fallout from the levies.
The sales tax could be cut to 5% from its current 10% until nominal wage growth reaches levels of 2% above inflation, he said.
"The aim of the sales tax cut would be to support the economy in the short term, especially for consumption, so we can revert once the economy recovers to a certain extent and wage growth rates increase again," he said.
The rising cost of living for Japanese households is expected to be a hot topic ahead of the upper house election expected in July, when the DPP will aim to build on its strong showing in an election last October.
The DPP leader also said the pacing of the Bank of Japan's reduction of bond purchases as it shifts toward normalization needs to be considered flexibly given the drastic changes in the economic situation following Trump's tariff policies.
"The plan to taper off quantitative easing by reducing bond purchases was decided before the U.S. tariffs were imposed. There have been all sorts of changes to the economic situation since then," he said. "I think it's necessary to flexibly adjust the pace of the reduction of bond purchases."
Information for this article was contributed by Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Akemi Terukina and Sakura Murakami of Bloomberg (WPNS).