With so-called “stacked” tariffs looming around President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff deadline, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent expressed optimism that some of America’s trading partners are already reaching out to negotiate.
“Going into April 2, some of our worst trading partners in terms of the way they treat us have already come to President Trump offering… substantial decreases in very unfair tariffs,” Bessent said in an exclusive interview on “Mornings with Maria,” Tuesday.
“I’m optimistic that, April 2, some of the tariffs may not have to go on because a deal is pre-negotiated,” he added, “or that once countries receive their reciprocal tariff number, that, right after that, they will come to us and want to negotiate it down.”
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One month ago, Trump signed a plan for the U.S. to look at implementing “reciprocal” tariffs against countries that tax or limit markets for American goods.
Though specific levies have not been announced regarding trade countries’ exports, the president clarified in a Truth Social post: “If a Country feels that the United States would be getting too high a Tariff, all they have to do is reduce or terminate their Tariff against us. There are no Tariffs if you manufacture or build your product in the United States.”
There is broad agreement among economists that tariffs are a tax on imported goods that are normally paid by the importing company, which in turn passes on some or most of the cost of the tariff to consumers in the form of higher prices.
But Trump’s top officials have repeatedly quelled any concerns that tariffs will negatively impact the U.S. jobs market or consumer prices.
“There’s a big group of countries where we have a small surplus, but we don’t do a lot of trading with them,” Bessent said.
“And then there’s what we would call kind of, ‘the dirty 15,’ and they have substantial tariffs,” he added, pointing out that “as important as a tariff or some of these non-tariff barriers” are, where they do testing or have domestic production “bear no resemblance to safety or anything that we do to their products.”
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FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.
