Kim Mackrael
Appearances
WSJ What’s News
Trump’s Economic Messaging Spooks CEOs. Why Are They Keeping Quiet?
The tariffs that they've talked about would basically come into effect in two sets. The first set would come April 1st and the next would come in mid-April.
WSJ What’s News
Trump’s Economic Messaging Spooks CEOs. Why Are They Keeping Quiet?
Worth flagging that for all of this, the EU has really emphasized the idea that if there was any way of coming to a deal with the US to avert the steel and aluminum tariffs that the US imposed, they could not impose these retaliatory tariffs or they could take them away later on.
WSJ What’s News
Trump’s Economic Messaging Spooks CEOs. Why Are They Keeping Quiet?
The EU has tried in producing this list to come up with products that will have a maximum influence and potentially maximum pain for the United States while minimizing the impact and the pain for Europeans. And so a lot of them focus on, in some cases, Republican states, in some cases, products that they think that Europeans can find elsewhere from other countries.
WSJ What’s News
Trump’s Economic Messaging Spooks CEOs. Why Are They Keeping Quiet?
You mentioned whiskey, motorcycles, motorboats. We've got cranberries, garden umbrellas, tablecloths, handkerchiefs, soybeans, which is on the list of potential tariffs. They're also a major agricultural export to the EU from Louisiana, which also happens to be the home state of House Speaker Mike Johnson. You can see a little bit of an attempt by the EU to make some deliberate choices there.
WSJ What’s News
Trump’s Economic Messaging Spooks CEOs. Why Are They Keeping Quiet?
Thank you, Kim. Thank you.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
No, I think that's right. The US is an extremely important export market for Europe. And in Europe's case, it's 20% across the board tariffs, as well as the auto tariffs of 25%, the steel and aluminum tariffs of 25%. The threat of future tariffs, that's a huge threat to the outlook for Europe.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
Yeah. And pharmaceutical tariffs for Europe would hit Ireland very hard. Denmark is a major pharmaceutical hub for Europe. There's the potential for even more hits to the economy that could be coming.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
The EU is really trying to pursue a two-pronged path in responding to Trump's tariffs. Their goal is to have negotiations and come up with some sort of deal that they hope would be beneficial for both the US and the EU. At the same time, the feeling is that you're not going to make much progress on negotiations if you don't come at it from a strong position.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
And the view among EU officials is you need to have a stick waiting. So there'll be a vote today to approve a set of tariffs on specific US products. And if that vote is approved, which is quite likely, then they would go into effect next week.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
Coming up with an agreement on which American products to go after is not the easiest thing for the European Union, which has 27 member countries, all sorts of different interests that they have to get everybody basically on board for something that in some cases might cause some pain. So they work to narrow down a list of products to go after. all sorts of iconic American products.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
In some cases, we've got peanut butter, chewing gum is actually on the list. So chewing gum will face a European tariff coming soon, likely. We've got boats, motorcycles, Harley Davidson would be affected by that one. Also interesting in this list is what they decided to spare. So we've got whiskey was on an original potential hit list for European tariffs that was taken off.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
During the process, same for American wines. And those are interesting because after the EU initially started talking about its retaliation about a month ago, President Trump responded very quickly with a threat of a potential 200% tariff on European alcohols, threatening specifically champagne, but saying that that could apply to other alcoholic beverages as well.
WSJ What’s News
Bonds Sell Off as New U.S. Tariffs Upend Global Trade
That would be absolutely devastating for the wine and spirits industry in Europe. You can see some strategizing going on there where you still are hitting quite a lot of American products, but there's some care being taken to not overly antagonize.
WSJ What’s News
U.S. Doubles Steel, Aluminum Tariffs to 50%
For the EU, this is an inconvenient change in U.S. policy, to say the least. It comes, as I've recently promised, to advance negotiations to speed things up. To have another increase on US tariffs is something that EU officials have warned could actually cause some problems for those negotiations.
WSJ What’s News
U.S. Doubles Steel, Aluminum Tariffs to 50%
They've suggested as well that it could actually trigger retaliation by putting tariffs on US goods in response. EU countries are, compared with some big steel exporters like India, Japan, South Korea, they are relatively smaller players. The measures nonetheless come at a very sensitive time for the EU as it tries to increase its economic growth.
WSJ What’s News
U.S. Doubles Steel, Aluminum Tariffs to 50%
It's working on building up its defense manufacturing base. And obviously, that's something that relies very heavily on metals production.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
So the trade relationship is huge. The EU is the U.S. 's biggest trading partner and vice versa. And if you think about it in terms of the importance for the U.S. economy, trading goods and services with the EU actually accounted last year for almost 5% of the U.S. 's gross domestic products.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
Yeah, that is right. So this is an issue that President Trump raises quite a lot and clearly a big concern for him. But President Trump tends to focus specifically on the goods trade deficit that the US has with the EU. What that doesn't fully account for is that the US actually has a services surplus.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
So, you know, if you combine both the goods trade and the services trade, there is still for the US a deficit overall in trade with the EU, but it's a lot smaller than what typically is raised by US trade officials.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
The Trump administration is coming at these talks looking for some pretty significant concessions from trading partners generally and from the EU. And some of what they're asking for are changes to policy that the EU wouldn't tend to consider to be trade issues. One example I think that people have probably heard about is European countries' value-added tax. And that's a consumption tax.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
It's not that different from a sales tax. It's used throughout Europe and a lot of other countries, not used in the US. Generally, it's seen as a non-discriminatory tax, but it's been an issue that President Trump has raised repeatedly as a major concern. And it's something that European countries' governments rely on the value-added tax for a lot of their revenue.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
So that's one of the sticking points. And I think some of the others... that we've seen come up are the EU's food safety rules. President Trump sees those as, in some cases, a barrier to trade, to keeping U.S. products out, and the EU's digital rules.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
So in some cases, we're talking about policies that have been developed at the EU level that the EU is not really interested in just giving these up in these talks.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
We haven't seen at this stage any signs of a real breakthrough right now. But we've got a milestone coming up. There's a possibility of the U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer, will probably be at the OECD meetings happening in Paris next week. That might be an opportunity for him to have a meeting with the EU's trade commissioner.
WSJ What’s News
EU Gets Tariff Deadline Extension
And then, you know, we've got just now a few more weeks until July 9th. So... There's a lot of recognition from the EU side anyway that it is a crunch time to try to get a deal if one is to be gotten.
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
Yeah, so they really are not looking at doing this in the near term. This is something they want to have on hand in case they get to that point. They'll probably be making an assessment closer to the end of the 90-day pause on the higher reciprocal tariffs.
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
If they get to the point at the end of those three months where it seems clear there's no deal that the EU considers to be fair forthcoming, then that's a point when they would consider the U.S. tariffs to be a somewhat more permanent thing, or are we still actually making progress on negotiations?
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
The talks are ongoing. What we're hearing from them are that... The EU has come up with a few different offers or suggestions of things that it could do. They've said, here are some products we could probably buy more of. And the examples they've given are liquefied natural gas and soybeans. They've also said one thing we could do is we could all lower our industrial tariffs. to zero.
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
Neither of those are things that it appears the Trump administration has really picked up in a way that it moves the negotiations forward substantially.
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
It's a bit early to say what this will mean for the EU, but the early feedback that I've heard so far is that, first of all, you have to consider that these are very differently sized economies.
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
So the fact that the UK was able to come up with a deal with the US, much smaller economy compared with the EU's 27 member states, also a unified economy and is always balancing multiple interests in a way that can be a little more complicated than a country like the UK.
WSJ What’s News
First American Pope Elected to Lead Catholic Church
The other thing is some European officials, they look at this and they say, well, maybe there is something we could learn from what worked for the UK, but not necessarily that this is a template for a European deal.
WSJ What’s News
Boycotting Target, Part 2: Is Its Business Paying a Price?
To be honest, I feel empowered by that. Actually, because I believe in community. That's how we built our brand.
WSJ What’s News
Boycotting Target, Part 2: Is Its Business Paying a Price?
We have felt impact from our sales on Target.com. But what I will say is that we're seeing better awareness from like a community level, more grassroots.
WSJ What’s News
Boycotting Target, Part 2: Is Its Business Paying a Price?
I'm not wallowing. You know what I mean? I'm not wallowing. Because I know that there's another wave of support that's coming. So if I can just hold out, I think it'll work.