On the occasion of President Trump’s first hundred days in office, US Treasury Secretary Besent defended Trump’s sweeping global tariff policy during a press conference on Tuesday, April 29th, describing it as creating “strategic uncertainty” to potentially achieve optimal agreements between the US and other countries.
Trump’s global tariff policy, particularly the US-China trade war, has caused market turbulence. Besent stated that Trump is creating “strategic uncertainty” in order to secure the potential “best trade agreements”.
He predicted that as the US announces trade agreements with other countries, uncertainty will decrease.
“As we move forward with announced agreements, there will be certainty,” he said. “But certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiations.”
During an interview on Sunday, April 27th, with the US network ABC’s program “This Week”, Besent expressed similar views. He said that in game theory, this is called “strategic uncertainty”. You don’t tell the other party where you will end up in negotiations.
“No one is better at creating this kind of impact than President Trump,” Besent said, explaining that Trump’s announcement of high tariffs on other countries has prompted them to engage in negotiations with the US. The US will demand other countries to eliminate tariffs on American goods, remove non-tariff trade barriers, cease currency manipulation, stop subsidizing labor and capital.
On April 2nd, Trump announced a global tariff policy imposing reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries; on April 9th, he announced the suspension of 90 days of reciprocal tariffs on countries other than China to allow time for these countries to reach trade agreements with the US. However, the US’s 10% baseline tariff on these countries remains in effect.
In order to persuade Trump to lift tariffs, economic entities such as Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, India, and the EU have engaged in negotiations with the US, hoping to reach trade agreements. Potential concessions from negotiating countries include lowering import tariffs on American products, purchasing American energy products, investing in American energy projects, and reducing non-tariff barriers to the US.
During the press conference on Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Besent mentioned that trade agreements with India, South Korea, and Japan are making progress, with a very close deal already imminent with India.
He stated that he would not go into details about easing car tariffs, but he did mention that this would lead to a massive reshoring of American car manufacturing.
“The goal is to bring back high-quality industrial jobs to the US. President Trump is focused on future employment, not past employment,” Besent said. “We do want precision manufacturing and bring it back to the US.”
He added that another crucial issue in this regard is national security, as President Trump believes that “economic security is national security, and national security is economic security. We saw during COVID that our supply chains were disrupted, and we need to bring back many supply chains, whether it’s semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, or steel.”
“Therefore, this is a combination of building free, fair trade and addressing national security vulnerabilities,” he said.