Hardball or a Hail Mary? Trade Tactics Go Down to the Wire
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India plays hardball while Switzerland hopes for a Hail Mary just hours before steep U.S. tariffs come into effect. Plus, foreign envoy Steve Witkoff makes a last-minute trip to Moscow as Trump's Russia sanctions loom. And the UN hopes to shore up critical minerals for the world's energy needs.
But will it work? Countries like the US and China are not going to be willing to give up the control they already have over the industry, because for them, they control the pricing power as it is.
It's Wednesday, August the 6th. I'm Azhar Sukri for The Wall Street Journal. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. As the clock ticks down toward President Trump's next tariff deadline tomorrow, some of the countries facing the largest tariff threats and yet to reach a trade deal with the US are taking very different approaches to negotiations. With Trump now threatening tariffs on India beyond the planned 25%, the country is refusing to cave to US demands for it to end large-scale purchases of Russian oil – prompting a response from Moscow that India is free to choose its own trading partners. Here's Journal Markets reporter Chelsea Delaney.
Trump said on CNBC Tuesday that he could be raising tariffs on them significantly in the next 24 hours. So that's something to definitely watch for. He's been quite critical of the fact that India is continues to buy Russian oil. We don't sort of seem to see India rushing to Washington for negotiations, you know, and other countries that are still trying to potentially get deals or countries like Canada. But even though these tariffs will go into effect just after midnight, it's not the end of negotiations. There likely will still be negotiations after the deadline. So this isn't necessarily the end of the road for countries in terms of these trade deals.
Today, the president of Switzerland is in Washington, hoping to avert double-digit tariffs that Chelsea says have stunned the Alpine nation.
Well, it's been seen as a humiliation, a huge slap in the face to Switzerland.
How will looming U.S. tariffs reshape global trade negotiations?
They have gotten one of the highest tariff rates in the world. And Switzerland thought it had a really good relationship with the U.S. They thought they were going to be the second country to get a trade deal. They thought they had a text of a trade deal. And this all has just sort of come crashing down in the past week. For Switzerland, it is a huge problem, a 39 percent tariff. is a major threat to their economy. The US is their biggest export market. They are a very small country, only 9 million people, and exports is sort of the lifeblood of the Swiss economy. And a 39% tariff rate would be really devastating to a lot of that, especially when you look at the international comparison. The EU has a 15% tariff rate.
The UK has a 10% tariff rate. So it would make them very uncompetitive.
Chelsea explains that the Swiss president's dash to Washington is a last-ditch attempt to head off these punishing tariffs.
Switzerland's definitely hoping for a deal to get this 39% tariff rate taken down. The only thing we've heard so far is that the Swiss president is going to be meeting with Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State. It's not clear if they have meetings set up with Trump himself or members of the trade delegation. Some of the things that they could do are try and invest more in the U.S. They could also perhaps do some sort of energy purchases like the EU has agreed to do, buy more American LNG.
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