Trump to sign executive orders targeting trade abuses
White House’s Peter Navarro says orders have nothing to do with China president’s visit and do not target China
President Donald Trump talked tough on trade on the campaign trail, vowing to renegotiate a slew of major deals and to label China a currency manipulator on “Day One”.
Now his administration appears to be taking a more cautious approach.
On Friday, the president will sign a pair of executive orders aimed at cracking down on trade abuses, according to top administration officials. The first calls for the completion of a large-scale report to identify “every form of trade abuse and every non-reciprocal practice that now contributes to the US trade deficit,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Officials would have 90 days to produce a country-by-country, product-by-product report that would serve as the basis of future decision-making by the administration on trade-related issues, Ross said on Thursday night.
“It will demonstrate the administration’s intention not to hip-shoot, not to do anything casual, not to do anything abruptly, but to take a very measured and analytical approach, both to analysing the problem and therefore to developing the solutions for it,” he said.