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Exclusive: A leaked Trump bill to blow up the WTO
Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules.
Why it matters: The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned.
The details: The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:
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First and foremost, watch the markets Monday Morning. This is earth shattering news.
Second, I am very curious to hear what Bernie has to say. He has sponsored a bill to remove the US from the WTO charter in the past.
As far as my opinion. I support this, but even I am a bit shook by the prospect of this. This is earth shattering news. I can not put into words how big of a deal this is to even float this idea.
Discuss.........
Illustration: Lazaro Gamio/Axios
Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules.
Why it matters: The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned.
The details: The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:
- The "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) principle that countries can't set different tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements;
- "Bound tariff rates" — the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.
- "The good news is Congress would never give this authority to the president," the source added, describing the bill as "insane."
- "It's not implementable at the border," given it would create potentially tens of thousands of new tariff rates on products. "And it would completely remove us from the set of global trade rules."
- In a White House meeting to discuss the bill earlier this year, Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short bluntly told Navarro the bill was "dead on arrival" and would receive zero support on Capitol Hill, according to sources familiar with the exchange.
- Navarro replied to Short that he thought the bill would get plenty of support, particularly from Democrats, but Short told Navarro he didn't think Democrats were in much of a mood to hand over moreauthority to Trump.
- But Walters signaled that we shouldn't take this bill as anything like a done deal. "The only way this would be news is if this were actual legislation that the administration was preparing to rollout, but it’s not," she said. "Principals have not even met to review any text of legislation on reciprocal trade."
- Between the lines: Note the specificity of Walters' quote above. Trump directly requested this legislation and was verbally briefed on it in May. But he hasn't met with the principals to review the text.
_____________________________________________________
First and foremost, watch the markets Monday Morning. This is earth shattering news.
Second, I am very curious to hear what Bernie has to say. He has sponsored a bill to remove the US from the WTO charter in the past.
As far as my opinion. I support this, but even I am a bit shook by the prospect of this. This is earth shattering news. I can not put into words how big of a deal this is to even float this idea.
Discuss.........
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