Trump Weighed Even Bigger Tariffs in Push by Trade Adviser
特朗普曾考虑施加更大的关税以推动贸易顾问的主张

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供应链洞察是一份每日跟踪全球贸易的通讯。在这里订阅。

President Donald Trump’s steeper-than-expected tariffs have traumatized financial markets and triggered recession fears all over the world.
唐纳德·特朗普比预期更严厉的关税措施已经惊吓了金融市场，并引发了全球范围内的衰退担忧。

His White House weighed the option of going even bigger.
他的白宫考虑了采取更严厉措施的选项。

Trade adviser Peter Navarro urged the president to implement either an across-the-board 25% tax on imports or a so-called “reciprocal” formula based on trade deficits, people familiar with the matter said. The latter was incorporated in Trump’s proposal announced last week, on top of a baseline duty of 10%.
贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗敦促总统实施全面 25%的进口税或基于贸易逆差的所谓“对等”公式。知情人士称，后者被纳入了上周特朗普宣布的提议中，该提议在 10%的基础关税之上。

The upshot: After weeks of deliberations inside the Trump team over his flagship policy, the plan that ultimately emerged hewed closest to the position of Navarro — the president’s most hawkish adviser on trade — according to people with knowledge of the deliberations, who requested anonymity to describe private talks.
结果：在特朗普团队就他的旗舰政策进行了数周的讨论后，最终出台的计划最接近于贸易鹰派顾问纳瓦罗的观点，据知情人士透露，这些人要求匿名以描述私下里的谈话。

That tilt is key to the anxiety spreading across Wall Street and corporate America. Many prominent investors had celebrated Trump’s election victory as the dawn of a new era of pro-business policies, only to be left in shock when the president followed through with what he promised during the campaign: aggressive use of tariffs to topple a global economic order he has long decried as unfair.
这一点对于在华尔街和美国企业界蔓延的焦虑至关重要。许多知名投资者曾庆祝特朗普的当选胜利，认为这是新一波亲商政策的开始，但当总统兑现了竞选期间的承诺——采取激进的关税措施来推翻他长期认为不公平的全球经济秩序——时，他们感到震惊。

In the run-up to Trump’s announcement in the Rose Garden last week, the internal discussions featured moderates — who supported the lower 10% rate for universal tariffs, perhaps with exceptions — and maximalists.
在上周特朗普在玫瑰园宣布之前，内部讨论中包括了温和派——他们支持较低的 10%普遍关税率，或许有例外——和激进派。

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was a voice of caution, encouraging the use of tariffs primarily as a negotiating tool, the people said. Navarro viewed them as something more fundamental — the means to transform US trade relationships — and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also struck a strident tone.
国务院财政部长 Scott Bessent 是一个谨慎的声音，鼓励将关税主要用作谈判工具，人们说。Navarro 则认为关税是更根本的东西——改变美国贸易关系的手段——而商务部部长 Howard Lutnick 也采取了强硬的立场。

Subsequently, Trump’s economic team all endorsed the plan — an outcome that underscores the growing disconnect between the administration and the business world.
随后，特朗普的经济团队都支持了这一计划——这一结果凸显了行政部门与商界之间的越来越大分歧。

‘Just the Beginning’  ‘仅仅开始’

In Trump’s first term, key advisers included figures — like Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn — broadly in tune with a Republican Party that had championed free trade for decades. Now Trump has surrounded himself with protectionists. The contest between Bessent and Lutnick to become Treasury secretary saw both men competing to pledge support for tariffs.
在特朗普的第一任期内，关键顾问包括像史蒂芬·姆努钦和加里·科恩这样的人士，他们大致与长期倡导自由贸易的共和党保持一致。现在，特朗普身边围绕着保护主义者。贝斯滕和卢特尼克争夺财政部长职位的竞赛中，两人都在竞相承诺支持关税。

Taken together, the trade measures Trump has announced so far would raise US import taxes to their highest levels in more than a century. In a Financial Times op-ed on Monday, Navarro said Trump wants more than just lower duties for US exports.

“To those world leaders who, after decades of cheating, are suddenly offering to lower tariffs — know this: that’s just the beginning,” he wrote.

Still, there could be an opening for Trump to use the tariffs as leverage to strike deals and drop certain rates down to the baseline 10%, which is widely seen as the lowest he’ll likely go, the people said. As Bessent said on Fox Business on Monday, “It is my hope that through good negotiations, all we will do is see levels come down.”

Read More: Bessent Sees Potential Good Deals as US Works Priority List

Asked to comment on the tariff-design process, Navarro said: “What happens in the Oval, stays in the Oval. Nothing from anonymous sources is ever credible, merely media mischief and misdirection.”

Navarro is known for his brash, uncompromising nature and has sometimes sparked anger in Trump’s orbit. Billionaire adviser Elon Musk — whose carmaker Tesla Inc. could be hit hard by tariffs — said Tuesday that Navarro is “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

‘There Was Debate’

As the tariff rollout drew closer, Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett were on the more cautious end, the people said. Hassett and Bessent both had proposed tariffs that were nuanced and targeted, some of the people said. Bessent warned about market consequences of an across-the-board tariff rollout, and generally those in his camp argued that Trump could always add tariffs later.

Read More: Wall Street Gets Shock as Bessent Plays Second Fiddle on Tariffs

“It was a plan that was discussed by the president’s entire trade team,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. “A few proposals were given to the president, there was debate and discussion and the president made his decision.”

White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump “fosters open discussion and debate behind closed doors among his advisers to inform his decision-making.”

“The entire Trump administration is aligned on addressing the national emergency posed by our country’s persistent trade deficits and restoring American Greatness from Main Street to Wall Street,” he said.

A Treasury spokesperson also stressed that the Cabinet was unified behind Trump’s economic agenda, saying the president’s actions have brought other countries to the table. In a post on X, Bessent said he’s proud to be working with Trump to “right the wrongs of longstanding global trade imbalances.”

Trump steered away from the most aggressive options in two other ways. He elected to not add tariffs on specific products — like automobiles and pharmaceuticals — on top of the reciprocal ones, avoiding a double-whammy for key industries. Greer supported that position, one person said.

Trump also excluded Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading partners, from this latest round. The North American neighbors have already been hit with a 25% tariff, though there’s an exemption for goods shipped under the continental trade pact that Trump negotiated during his first term. Lutnick advocated simply extending that arrangement, one of the people said.

Mystery Formula

Trump officials have given conflicting answers about who came up with the formula for the reciprocal tariffs, based on nations’ trade balances with the US. It sowed confusion among investors and has been dismissed as unsophisticated and sloppy by economists. Many countries hit by the highest duties are low-wage nations that manufacture consumer goods, and some even had free-trade pacts that were effectively undone by Trump’s announcement.

Read More: Trump’s ‘Reciprocal’ Tariff Formula Is All About Trade Deficits

“When you look at the country’s trade deficit, we believe that captures some of the unfairnesses, and you have to have a uniform methodology,” Greer said at a Tuesday congressional hearing.

In one analysis that was a potential foundation, the Council of Economic Advisers used a variety of models aimed at devising tariffs that focused on a nation’s non-tariff barriers. Those could be less sensitive to trade deficits, because some nations have a competitive advantage with the US in certain products.

Navarro told CNBC on Monday that the math was based on CEA calculations. But in some cases the tariffs that were rolled out didn’t reflect CEA’s numbers, one of the people said.