U.S. tells partners to honor tariff deals as Trump regroups

Senior US officials said President Donald Trump’s tariff defeat at the Supreme Court won’t unravel deals negotiated with US partners as they sought to defend the administration’s assertive trade policies.    

Those deals — which the administration made with partners including China, the European Union, Japan and South Korea — remain in place, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. He sought to separate those arrangements from the planned 15% global tariff Trump announced Saturday.

“We want them to understand these deals are going to be good deals,” Greer said. “We’re going to stand by them. We expect our partners to stand by them.”

Friction over the renewed uncertainty spilled out Sunday as the European Parliament’s trade chief said he’ll propose freezing the EU’s ratification of a trade deal with the US until the Trump administration clarifies its policy. In New Delhi, officials cited similar reasons for India postponing talks in the US this week on finalizing an interim trade deal.

The US Supreme Court ruling that struck down Trump’s use of emergency authority to wield tariffs preceded his planned trip next month to China. Greer suggested that alternative US trade tools, including those involving investigations of other countries’ trade practices, would give the US leverage.

“We have tariffs like this already in place on China, we have open investigations already,” he said.

Trump is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit starting March 31.

“The president and Xi have a strong relationship,” Greer told Fox News Sunday. The US maintains an average tariff of 40% on China without using the emergency law struck down by the court, he said.

Trump’s approach to trade, largely nullified by the Supreme Court, nevertheless has riled US trading partners worldwide, including the EU. 

Greer said he “spoke with my counterpart from the EU this weekend” and would be talking with officials of other key US trading partners to reassure them.

“Rest assured, I’ve been speaking to these folks as well,” Greer told CBS. “I’ve been telling them for a year — whether we won or lost, we were going to have tariffs, the president’s policy was going to continue.”

“That’s why they signed these deals even while the litigation was pending,” he said.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm in Brussels, said Sunday it wants “full clarity” on the Trump administration’s next steps. “A deal is a deal,” the bloc’s executive arm said in a statement, adding that it expects the US to honor its commitments under a trade deal signed in August.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said it’s “critically important” for global trade to “have clarity” from the US administration.

“I hope it’s going to be clarified, and it’s going to be sufficiently thought through so that we don’t have, again, more challenges and the proposals will be in compliance with the constitution, in compliance with the law,” Lagarde said on Face the Nation.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier Sunday the US was in contact with its foreign trading partners “and they like the tariff deals.”

“So you know, they’re not going to be changed,” Bessent said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.

Representative Don Bacon, a Republican tariff skeptic who has praised the Supreme Court ruling, said in a social post that Trump’s new 15% tariff order “will not endure.”

The new tariffs will be based on Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs for 150 days without congressional approval under specific circumstances, including “large and serious” balance of payments deficits.

“It is not Constitutional,” Bacon said on X. “It’s not only terrible policy, but it is also bad politics.”

Read More: EU May Freeze US Trade Deal Approval on Trump Tariff ‘Chaos’

Greer signaled that US trade partners shouldn’t count on tariff relief based on the Supreme Court ruling. 

He said the 15% global tariff that Trump announced Saturday is “roughly equivalent to the types of tariffs that we had in place” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the tool that the court ruled Trump can’t use for tariffs.

“The reality is, we want to maintain the policy we have, have as much continuity as possible,” Greer said on ABC’s This Week. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com