Donald Trump’s decision to impose sweeping tariffs on US trade partners — including close security allies — has triggered a rush to find ways of placating Washington in the brief window before the radical measures take effect.
The US president’s executive order on the tariffs extended an olive branch to countries taking “significant steps” to remedy trade surpluses with the US and address tax, regulatory and licensing practices deemed unfair.
But capitals have less than a week to bargain. Trump on Wednesday said higher so-called “reciprocal” tariff rates would apply from April 9, after his basic tariff of 10 per cent on almost all countries takes effect on April 5.
Important figures in the Trump firmament, including his son Eric, took to social media to encourage nations to come forward. “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump,” he said on X.
About 60 nations that run the largest trade surpluses with the US — including key strategic allies such as the EU, Japan and South Korea — face extra tariffs higher than 10 per cent, with some extending to 50 per cent or more in total.
Few of them have moved to retaliate. In an attempt to reduce its 20 per cent tariff, the EU is instead prepared to cut the $235.6bn trade surplus it racked up in 2024 by buying more US goods and lowering some tariffs.
Brussels has offered to drop car tariffs of 10 per cent to Washington’s level of 2.5 per cent, said officials briefed on the talks. It could also increase energy purchases, buy more American weapons or join US actions against Chinese product dumping.
EU officials believe stock market falls and the prospect of higher inflation will push the US to negotiate. Maroš Šefčovič, the bloc’s trade commissioner, will hold online talks with US counterparts on Friday.
Still, the two sides have significant differences: the EU has dismissed US claims that its value added tax systems discriminate against US companies, and has ruled out compromising on food and product safety rules to allow, for example, chlorine-washed American chicken.
“In spite of any negotiation we do not lower our standards,” a senior EU official said. “We do not discriminate against anyone.”
Trump’s swingeing global tariffs, which sent markets sharply downwards, were introduced despite charm offensives by countries from Japan to Israel seeking to pre-empt the charges with moves designed to mollify the president.
A day ahead of Trump’s announcement, Israel had scrapped its remaining tariffs on US imports — only to still be hit with a 17 per cent tariff from its largest single trading partner.
Japan, meanwhile, had promised in recent months to increase liquefied natural gas imports from the US and invest in its planned Alaska pipeline, and has strongly hinted that plans to increase defence spending would land with US contractors. Trump was also able to announce a $500bn package of artificial intelligence infrastructure investment that Japan’s SoftBank was due to spearhead.
None of this appeared to help: Japan was hit with a tariff of 24 per cent despite being an important US security partner in the region.
Japanese officials said the failure of these offers raised questions over whether further blandishments — potentially including more LNG purchases and corporate investment — would deliver results. A senior government official said it was no longer clear whether Trump could be bought off with trade concessions, as in his first term.
“If, as seems possible, he wants to change the nature of global trade and use tariffs to cut taxes in the US, it’s not clear that there is something Japan or Japanese companies can offer that will offset that,” they said.
South Korea, long in Trump’s crosshairs because of its persistent trade surplus with the US — a record $55bn last year — faces a long list of US trade grievances including restrictive auto emissions regulations, opaque pharma pricing, refusal to import some American beef, and network fees imposed on US content providers such as Netflix.
Analysts said Seoul could buy more LNG and US weapons, adding the country had some leverage because its companies provide the only viable alternative to Chinese rivals in key strategic sectors such as shipbuilding and semiconductors.
“There are certain strategic industries where the US will not be able to afford to isolate itself from global supply chain partnerships,” said Tom Ramage, economic policy analyst at the Korea Economic Institute of America.
Han Duck-soo, South Korea’s acting president, said the government would make “all-out efforts” to minimise losses to Korean businesses from a planned 26 per cent tariff.
Other smaller Southeast Asian countries slapped with substantial tariffs, such as Vietnam and Cambodia, have less obvious points of leverage, though they provide large volumes of lower-tech manufactured goods to the US, including clothes, shoes and white goods.
Vietnam, which emerged as a manufacturing powerhouse in recent years as companies shifted production from China, is faced with one of the highest tariff rates at 46 per cent.
That came despite its offers to cut tariffs on US products and buy more Boeing planes, LNG and agricultural products. Vietnam last month made concessions to allow Trump ally Elon Musk’s SpaceX to trial its Starlink satellite internet service in the country.
India had also sought to pre-emptively mollify the US leader, setting out concessions on goods including bourbon, motorcycles, luxury cars and solar cells.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the White House last month, the two countries said they were opening talks on a trade deal — a development that appeared explicitly linked to Trump’s reciprocal tariff threat — and aimed to agree the first tranche by autumn.
The country was hit with a 27 per cent tariff this week. Modi’s government maintained it still aimed to make progress on a US-India trade agreement “in the coming days”. As with Europe, New Delhi is not expected to open up its agricultural markets for fear of a political backlash from farmers.
In Latin America two of the US’s largest regional trade partners, Brazil and Argentina, both escaped with the minimum 10 per cent tariff.
Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president — an enthusiastic ally of Trump’s despite ideological differences on free trade — has repeatedly said he wants a US free trade deal. He celebrated Buenos Aires’s relatively low tariff figure by saying on X that “friends will be friends” and sharing a link to the song of that name by Queen.
Milei hoped to meet Trump on Thursday in Mar-a-Lago, where the Argentine will receive an award from a conservative group, and his foreign minister Gerardo Werthein was due to meet US trade representative Jamieson Greer.
South Africa, already in diplomatic conflict with Trump over its affirmative action laws, was another nation holding out hopes of a deal. It exported $8.1bn of goods to the US last year, about half of which were critical minerals such as platinum used in cars.
Its punishment was a 31 per cent tariff, but President Cyril Ramaphosa said Trump’s move “affirm[ed] the urgency to negotiate a new bilateral and mutually beneficial trade agreement”.
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Donald MacKay, head of XA Global Trade Advisors in South Africa, said small economies needed to find ways to avoid confronting Trump.
“Hiking tariffs on minerals, for example, would hurt mine revenues and their employees,” he said. “There is little that smaller countries could do that wouldn’t harm them more than the US.”
Reporting by Andy Bounds in Brussels, Leo Lewis in Tokyo, Christian Davies in Seoul, Anantha Lakshmi in Jakarta, Michael Pooler in São Paulo, Ciara Nugent in Buenos Aires, Rob Rose in Johannesburg and Peter Foster in London
