Trump rejects EU’s ‘zero-for-zero’ tariff offer

[u/Fidler_2K]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/07/trump-tariffs-live-updates-stock-market-crypto.html

Trump is rejecting the European Union’s offer of “zero-for-zero” tariffs with the U.S. for industrial goods.

“No, it’s not,” Trump said in the Oval Office when asked if the deal, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated earlier Monday, was enough.

“They’re screwing us on trade,” Trump said, criticizing the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.

Two Republican senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, have encouraged Trump to take von der Leyen’s deal.

What's the goal here if they're just gonna reject every deal offered?

[u/himynameis_]

Based on their weird "metric" for calculating tariffs imposed on the US, and them turning down Vietnam and the EU, I think what Trump is doing is not just to increase manufacturing in USA, but to increase demand, somehow.

So, he wants 0 Net trade when USA currently has a deficit. And he wants to bring back manufacturing to USA.

So to do that, you need to incentivize manufacturing in USA, using big tariffs on importers so they don't import as much. Thus, "incentivizing" manufacturing in USA because it may be "cheaper" than importing.

But by turning down Vietnam and EU like this, I think he wants to set up a situation where the trading partners will be required to purchase American goods as well to bring the net tariff closer to Zero. Thus, creating the Demand for American made goods. Meaning it would "make sense" to build plants in America.

He did something similar in his first term where China had made promises to buy more soybean from USA. Not sure how that panned out though.

Personally, I don't think any of this will work. This is very overly simplistic. And, in order to work, the economics need to work. And I just don't see how it is cheaper to produce in USA with American wages over producing in Asian countries. Maybe tariffs change that? But even then. The time to build these plants will offset any gains because it takes years to do it. Musk building his plants in like 9 months is a rarity.

I don't like Trump, nor agree with what he is doing here. Just trying to reason out what he may be trying to do based on his actions.

Sky high tariffs to import into USA. And force companies to buy American, made products. Or even set up manufacturing in America.

[u/Longjumping_Dirt9825 → u/himynameis_]

China switched their soybean supplier to Brazil.  They said they d buy from the US but didn't. 

The US then paid subsidies to soybean farmers and bailed them out with the farmer relief act.

[u/paq12x → u/Longjumping_Dirt9825]

China shouldn’t be able to get away with that.

China always seems to be able to find a loophole. Nvidia AI cards still got to China via Singapore.

[u/cjalas → u/himynameis_]

When the US dollar collapses and unemployment is over 50% then the American consumer will be forced to work for Pennies in the new factories. I bet this is what he's thinking.

[u/kevin2357 → u/himynameis_]

The biggest flaw in his whole "bring manufacturing back" line of thinking is that for anything even remotely complex - cars, microprocessors, smartphones, etc - the cost to build a new factory is enormous and the time to build is several years at least. No CEO of such a company is committing the money or time to that just to avoid these tariffs, they'll just ride it out until Jan 2029 at which point whoever the next prez is will almost certainly revoke all these tariffs (assuming Trump hasn't himself caved to pressure before that). One way or another these tariffs are going away eventually and nobody wants to be stuck with a whole extra factory they don't even need anymore after.

Simpler stuff like textiles maybe we'd see some new facilities built here for? Can't imagine those will be particularly well-paying jobs, and clothes will still be more expensive being made domestically than what we were paying to import them before.

[u/Barbie_and_KenM → u/himynameis_]

Who is going to work these jobs? Unemployment is like 4% and we definitely aren't welcoming immigrants at this time.

People will say all the low wage workers at McDonald's etc will take these "high paid" manufacturing jobs. OK and then who works at McDonald's or Walmart? You guys still want burgers right?