OUTLOOK

The Biden administration has set the regulatory stage for the incoming administration to step up export control enforcement, according to analysts and practitioners who say the Bureau of Industry and Security is ready to increase the use of recently created tools in 2025 and beyond. Over the past four years, the Biden administration has issued a series of complex and consequential export controls aimed at preventing China from obtaining advanced strategic technologies and keeping Russia from using U.S. technologies on...

Lawmakers soon will return to Washington facing a pile of expired or soon-to-expire trade programs and uncertainty about how President-elect Trump will engage with Congress – or not – on his trade agenda. Before leaving for the holidays, congressional leaders had been poised to renew one of those programs – trade preferences for Haiti, set to expire in September – and to legislate an outbound investment screen as part of a stopgap spending measure. Those measures, though, along with numerous...

The Trump administration in 2025 could overhaul the U.S. approach to trade with Latin America by striking and updating free trade deals in the region while leveraging tariff threats to curb migration, analysts tell Inside U.S. Trade . A new year and a new administration offer boundless opportunities for the U.S. to expand trade in the region, though the administration could introduce some trade irritants that complicate ties, they say President-elect Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of 10 to...

The Trump administration’s sweeping tariff agenda, reactions from trading partners and new laws passed by major allies could spark trade frictions as a new administration enters a busy year for trade. Before President-elect Trump is inaugurated, though, the outgoing administration has a few things remaining on its plate. It will kick off the year by overseeing the implementation of new tariffs on certain Chinese medical and technology products, set to take effect on Jan. 1. And, during his final week...

The second Trump administration is expected to continue a pattern it established in its first term and increase trade restrictions on China, but if U.S. barriers lead the Chinese government to believe the goal is to suppress China rather than compete with it, Beijing could resort to more drastic responses that extend beyond the economic arena, analysts tell Inside U.S. Trade . During the campaign President-elect Trump called for a 60 percent tariff rate on all imports from China, sometimes...

The World Trade Organization failed to deliver a reformed dispute settlement system in 2024. Negotiators want to maintain the momentum in the talks in 2025, but a slew of factors -- a new U.S. administration, a departed facilitator, an ongoing chasm in member views of the Appellate Body -- are setting the discussions up for uncertainty in the near term. WTO members had aimed to agree to a fully functioning dispute settlement system by 2024. While they did make “...

Like many of its member governments, the World Trade Organization is bracing for a second Trump administration, with delegations waiting to see how, and to what extent, the U.S. will engage in Geneva on the WTO’s long to-do list -- including fisheries subsidies, agriculture, dispute settlement reform and climate issues. The WTO ended the year on a bit of a mixed note, reappointing Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to another term at the end of November but failing to conclude deals on...

While climate change might not be a key priority for the incoming administration’s trade team, analysts say it’s likely to remain a factor underlying efforts to boost U.S. competitiveness and economic security -- though the president-elect's tariff plans, depending on how they are implemented, could blunt such efforts. President-elect Trump, a vocal skeptic of climate change and booster of U.S. fossil fuel production, has promised to walk back various efforts by the Biden administration to address climate change. The extent...

Promoting U.S. business activity abroad -- economic diplomacy -- has been a core government objective across changing administrations for decades, one the incoming Trump administration, despite the president-elect’s constant tariff threats, is not likely to abandon, according to two government-to-private sector liaisons, one a State Department official. “Promoting private-sector led growth has -- we’ve seen it throughout our history -- it has been a bipartisan commitment, spanning many many different administrations and I think the private sector involvement will continue,”...

The U.S. and the European Union have a slew of trade priorities on their agenda – from addressing shared challenges posed by China to finding ways to facilitate “green” trans-Atlantic trade – that analysts say bear watching as the two sides chart their next steps under the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council. Washington and Brussels are a little overdue for their next TTC ministerial, based on a biannual schedule they’ve been keeping since launching the council in 2021. But a...