Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world Donald Trump has singled out “tariff” as “the most beautiful word” in the English language, but his determination to reshape global trade extends far beyond customs duties, senior administration officials have warned. Peter Navarro, Trump’s influential senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, said on Tuesday the White House had the full range of “non-tariff weapons” in its sights as trade partners seek to negotiate after last week’s global tariffs announcement. “To those world leaders who, after decades of cheating, are suddenly offering to lower tariffs — know this: that’s just the beginning,” Navarro wrote, citing a laundry list of unfair practices he said included currency manipulation, “opaque” licensing, “discriminatory” product standards, “burdensome” customs procedures, data localisation and so called “lawfare” of taxes and regulation hitting US tech firms. The sheer breadth of the list presents huge challenges to trade delegations seeking deals with Trump, trade experts warned, as governments try to avoid alienating their own voters in politically sensitive areas like food standards or taxes on global tech giants. While the prospect of global tariffs this week upended markets, former UK Treasury adviser Mats Persson, now at consultancy EY, said Washington’s attempt to reshape these areas carried potentially even further-reaching implications. “Tariffs can be costly for business but also straightforward and easy to understand. Also targeting non-tariff barriers — regulation, standards, currency, bans — could possibly have a bigger impact on changing global supply chains than tariffs themselves.” South Korea, slapped with a 26 per cent tariff by Trump, was early to open broad-based negotiations. Trade minister Cheong In-kyo left for Washington on Tuesday promising a “package of measures” to cut the $55bn trade deficit with the US. Trump heralded the “TOP TEAM” arriving from Seoul, saying on social media that prospects for a deal were “looking good” but adding “we are bringing up other subjects that are not covered by Trade and Tariffs”. Among long-standing US grievances are Seoul’s auto emissions regulations, opaque pharma pricing, refusal to import some American beef, and network fees on US content providers such as Netflix. But experts warned that South Korea, like all countries, would have to tread a delicate path between appeasing Trump and its own domestic interests. Jaemin Lee, trade expert at Seoul National University, said South Korea could “drastically” ease rules on customs clearances and auto emissions to “bring them in line with international standards”. South Korea’s auto emissions regulations are a long-standing US grievance © Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images But he said there would be “strong public resistance” to easing rules on agricultural products, such as the country’s ban on beef from cattle more than 30 months old or its high tariffs to protect domestic rice production. Easing regulations or enforcement on digital platforms would be complicated by the fact that — unlike Europe — South Korea has homegrown online platforms it would want to protect. Japan is also in the Trump administration’s crosshairs over non-tariff barriers — such as product testing, opaque regulation, and barriers to overseas rice, dairy and fruit — despite a 2020 trade deal. Trade analysts said it would be exceptionally difficult to remove these, but suggested negotiations might address another of Navarro’s key complaints against Asian trade partners: “currency manipulation”. They said the choice of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to lead the US side of the talks was taken as a potential signal that Trump wants them to focus on the extended weakness of the yen against the dollar. In another example of the political tightrope governments are walking with Trump, allowing the yen to rise would require the Bank of Japan to keep raising interest rates despite the rising risk of a global recession, said Astris Advisory strategist Neil Newman. “The BoJ is independent, but ultimately has a duty to protect the Japanese economy. It may decide that it will step up to mitigate the tariffs,” he added. Elsewhere, governments may opt to set a red line. One such area is food standards, a particular bugbear of the US administration: markets including the UK, EU and Australia ban products such as hormone-treated beef and pork fed with the growth enhancer ractopamine, preventing imports of such products from the US. Trump singled out Australian beef in his Rose Garden speech on trade last week, but Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese followed the EU and UK in ruling out any loosening of food standards. Australia bans hormone-treated beef from its market which is a bugbear of the US © Alasdair Pal/Reuters Similarly challenging are US calls to dilute areas of regulation, such as the EU’s Digital Markets Act and digital services taxes, that impose regulatory and tax burdens on tech firms, with US giants often the biggest losers. EU trade spokesman Olof Gill said on Tuesday the EU was not prepared to discuss many complaints outlined by Navarro, including in areas like value added tax and product standards the US views as “discriminatory”. But he said other sweeteners were on the table, such as buying more US natural gas. Sabina Ciofu, international trade policy lead at the TechUK lobby group, said many of the US demands to roll back EU tech regulation would require Brussels to rewrite or rescind legislation already on the statute book, which she said “was never going to happen”. Outside clear political red lines, many countries have begun to indicate where they may be prepared to compromise with Washington. The UK has suggested it is prepared to dilute its own digital services tax. Ciofu said the EU, while not prepared to scrap the taxes, could look at measures to ease them in practice. “The conversation [with Washington] is focused not on scrapping regulations that are on the statute book but some elements of how you implement them, with a focus on competitiveness and simplification,” she said. In Vietnam, hit by a 46 per cent tariff and singled out by Navarro for allowing China to “evade US tariffs” by trans-shipping goods, the government said on Tuesday it was taking urgent steps to address the issue. Deputy prime minister Bui Thanh Son said he had asked the trade and industry ministry to “review and strictly control” the origin of goods to “prevent any unfortunate incidents from happening” and would share more information with the US. India, hit with a comparatively light 27 per cent tariff, also faces pressure. In recent years the US has complained it has imposed mandatory standards in sectors including chemicals, medical devices, batteries, electronics, food and textiles. Such rules are now the subject of a trade negotiation. Smaller countries with less leverage, like South Africa, are considering adjusting investment rules to placate the Trump administration, which has railed against its affirmative action policies designed to redress apartheid. These include obliging foreign companies to sell up to 30 per cent of their equity to Black local partners to qualify for telecommunications licences, a policy that led Elon Musk’s satellite communications operator Starlink to refuse to open in South Africa, accusing the country of having “openly racist” ownership laws. One concession South Africa could offer — which some in government favour — would be to allow an “equity equivalence” programme under which foreign companies could invest in other “socially-beneficial” programmes instead of selling a stake. Despite such creative thinking, experts remained sceptical that the US’s broad-based assault on “non-tariff barriers” would lead to a wider freeing-up of global trade, given the one-sided nature of the Trump administration’s attack. Creon Butler, head of global economy at the Chatham House think-tank, said the US itself imposed barriers on overseas companies. He cited the Jones Act of 1920, which still requires all goods travelling between US ports to be shipped on vessels crewed and owned by Americans. He added: “It’s not that non-tariff barriers are not uncommon. The problem is that there’s no recognition by Navarro and the Trump administration that the US does this as well. “There may be grounds for negotiations over NTBs, but the starting point cannot be simply one side imposing itself on the other.” Reporting by Peter Foster in London, Christian Davies in Seoul, Leo Lewis in Tokyo, Laura Dubois and Andy Bounds in Brussels, Nic Fildes in Sydney, Anantha Lakshmi in Jakarta, Andres Schipani in New Delhi and Rob Rose in Johannesburg