Trump’s tariffs news conference with Netanyahu was typically noncommittal, vague and contradictory

When Benjamin Netanyahu was asked at the weekend by Donald Trump to come immediately to Washington, he surely expected it was because Mr Trump was going to relent on the 17% tariff he’d whacked on Israel a few days earlier. Israeli officials hinted as much to me.

It looked like Israel would be the test case for the rest of the world. After all, the Israeli prime minister had already said his government would scrap all tariffs and trade barriers it has on American trade into Israel.

And so, in capitals around the world, they watched the Oval Office news conference.

Mr Trump began by inviting Mr Netanyahu to tell the world what his country was going to do for the US.

On cue, Mr Netanyahu reiterated his offer for the world to hear.

“We will eliminate the deficit and the trade barriers that have been put up unnecessarily,” Mr Netanyahu said to Mr Trump with deference. He added: “It serves as a model for other countries.”

It was a fair expectation the American president would offer something in return. But no.

Mr Trump went on to weave through numerous issues from Iran to Gaza. But no mention of removing or reducing the stinging 17% tariff on Israel.

When a reporter finally asked the obvious question towards the end the answer wasn’t what Mr Netanyahu or any other world leader facing tariffs wanted to hear.

Yanir Cozin from Israel’s GLZ Radio asked Mr Trump whether he would reduce the 17% tariffs imposed on Israel.

“Not sure,” the US president said. “We’ll see. We give Israel billions of dollars, $4bn (£3.1bn) a year, among the highest. We take care of our friends, not our enemies.”

It was typically (maybe intentionally) noncommittal, vague and contradictory.

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‘We have been ripped off’

At the end, I asked an Israeli official if they had any reaction. “I’m still thinking about it,” was the response.

Another European diplomat told me they remained wholly confused about how tariffs could be removed or reduced. It’s entirely unclear if Mr Trump is open to negotiations and if so, to what extent.

For nearly an hour Mr Trump spoke about his global tariff bombshell.

Can nations negotiate below 10% (the baseline tariff set for many countries, including the UK), he was asked directly. He didn’t give a direct reply.

“We have been ripped off,” he said. “We are going to be fair to other countries.”

Then a bone for Mr Netanyahu.

“Bibi is going to get down to a free base,” he said before contradicting that statement a few sentences later.

Trump says ‘it’s an honour’ to pick trade fight

On the broad trade fight he has picked with the world, causing global markets to tumble, he said: “It’s an honour to do it. No one else has.”

He was asked about the contradictory statements from his team – some saying “no negotiations” and others saying it is all a negotiation.

“They could both be true,” he said. “They could be permanent and they could be negotiations.”

The EU, he said, is “going to have to buy our energy from us, because they need it”, adding: “We have clean, beautiful coal.”

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‘Virtually every country wants to negotiate’

Could he name two or three countries that are “far along” in terms of getting a deal with him? He could not, except to say: “Virtually every country wants to negotiate. If I hadn’t done what I did, none of them would have come to negotiate.”

He had quite a bit to say about non-tariff barriers (NTBs) – these are the non-monetary barriers countries put in place because foreign items don’t meet their standards.

He singled out the EU and Japan on American cars. ‘Why don’t they buy them?” he complained. The reason is partly protectionism but also because American cars have safety-related NTBs applied to them. (There is a separate question about whether Europeans would actually buy massive gas-guzzling American vehicles in significant quantities.)

The EU is a particular stickler for NTBs. And the UK, despite Brexit, has remained aligned with a proportion of this regulation, particularly so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) barriers, which are biosecurity measures aimed at protecting human, animal, and plant life (the whole chlorinated chicken debate).

There is now growing pressure for the UK to remove some of these barriers to placate Mr Trump, but this would risk upsetting the reset with the EU and would be domestically politically risky too, igniting a debate about American food and medicine on UK shelves and cars on UK streets.

But as Israel’s Oval Office experience shows, maybe even all these offers aren’t enough for the American president.