Washington: US President Donald Trump said he is not planning to extend a 90-day pause on tariffs on most nations beyond July 9, when the negotiating period he set would expire, and his administration will notify countries that the trade penalties will take effect unless there are deals with the United States. “I don’t think I’ll need to,” he said in an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that was taped Friday. He then added, “I could, no big deal.”Letters will start going out “pretty soon” before the approaching deadline, he said. “We’ll look at how a country treats us – are they good, are they not so good – some countries we don’t care, we’ll just send a high number out,” Trump told Fox News.Those letters, he said, would say, “Congratulations, we’re allowing you to shop in the United States of America, you’re going to pay a 25% tariff, or a 35% or a 50% or 10%.”Trump had played down the deadline at a White House news conference Friday by noting how difficult it would be to work out separate deals with each nation. The administration had set a goal of reaching 90 trade deals in 90 days. Negotiations continue, but “there’s 200 countries, you can’t talk to all of them,” the President said in the interview. France confident of EU deal French finance minister Eric Lombard said the European Union can clinch some form of a trade agreement with the US before a July 9 deadline, when Washington is set to impose a 50% tariff on nearly all EU products. “From the experience of the last few months, we can clearly see that the US is in on the deal,” Lombard said in an interview Sunday with La Tribune Dimanche newspaper. As part of the negotiations between the EU and Washington, “there may be discussions on energy, particularly on liquefied natural gas,” he said. “Europe is still buying Russian LNG. Three LNG liquefaction plants are under construction in the Gulf of Mexico. We can therefore increase our imports of American gas, and this could be used to avoid the 10% increase in customs tariffs,” Lombard added.
