Trump expands use of US tariffs to reach national security goals

President Donald Trump’s freewheeling use of tariffs as a tool of American power may have been more extensive than was publicly known, encompassing an array of national security goals as well as the interests of individual companies, according to internal government documents obtained by The Washington Post.

This month, State Department officials considered demanding that U.S. trading partners vote against an international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the oceangoing container ships that are the backbone of global trade. In a draft “action memo,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio was told that department officials had sought “to inject this issue into the ongoing bilateral trade negotiations” with maritime nations such as Singapore.

That move came after administration officials this past spring debated broadening trade negotiations with more than a dozen nations, including by requiring Israel to eliminate a Chinese company’s control of a key port and insisting that South Korea publicly support deploying US troops to deter China as well as Seoul’s traditional rival, North Korea, the documents said.

Administration officials saw trade talks as an opportunity to achieve objectives that went far beyond Trump’s oft-stated goal of reducing the chronic US trade deficit. In the first weeks after the president paused his “reciprocal” tariffs April 9 to allow for negotiations, officials drew up plans to press countries near China for a closer defence relationship, including the purchase of US equipment and port visits, the documents said.

“This is the first time I’ve seen that type of request in a trade agreement. When you’re sitting at the negotiating table, you’re not talking about this stuff,” said Wendy Cutler, who spent more than a quarter century in the Office of the US Trade Representative and is now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington.

The latest sign that Trump views tariffs as the Swiss Army knife of diplomacy came this week, when he threatened to impose a 50 percent tariff on Indian goods to compel New Delhi to halt Russian oil purchases that the U.S. says support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In an eight-page list of “supplemental negotiating objectives,” US officials acknowledged that potential accords would cover issues, including military basing, “not traditionally found in a trade agreement.” Officials also discussed pressing other nations to provide concessions for individual companies including Chevron, one of the world’s 10 largest oil producers, and Elon Musk’s Starlink.

The negotiating document contained suggestions from other Cabinet departments in response to a request by the office of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and bore a handwritten notation indicating that it was a May 1 draft.

It is not clear whether the provisions were discussed in the negotiations. Trump has announced several framework trade agreements with the European Union, Japan, Vietnam and others. But the administration has not released formal texts.

A USTR spokesperson declined to comment.

“The document sent shock waves through the government,” said one State Department employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. “This isn’t normally how it works.”

Trump on several occasions has publicly mixed trade and unrelated issues. In January, the president said he would impose tariffs on Colombian goods unless that country’s leader agreed to accept deported migrants, which he eventually did. Last month, Trump threatened 50 percent tariffs on imports from Brazil if the government did not halt its prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly fomenting a coup.

On April 2, Trump described his tariffs as a response to other nations’ unfair trade practices that would reduce the $1.2 trillion U.S. merchandise trade deficit. The import taxes could be lowered for countries that “align sufficiently with the United States on economic and national security matters,” his executive order said.

As US negotiators scrambled to prepare for simultaneous talks with 18 top trading partners, suggestions poured in from across the administration.

The South Korean government should be urged to endorse a change in the positioning of US troops stationed there under the U.S. Forces Korea command, according to an early draft of a US-Korea agreement. Among the goals listed was a requirement that “Korea will issue a political statement supporting flexibility for USFK force posture to better deter China while continuing to deter [North Korea],” it said.

The US also wanted Seoul to boost defense spending to 3.8 percent of GDP, up from 2.6 percent last year, and to increase its $1 billion-plus contribution to cover the annual costs of basing the roughly 28,500 American troops in South Korea.

In a July 28 press briefing, Woo Sang-ho, South Korea’s senior secretary for political affairs, confirmed that defense issues were “on the negotiation list.” But they were not in the agreement that Trump announced two days later.

Trump nodded to his concerns over allied burden-sharing tariff remarks April 2 in the Rose Garden, during what he dubbed “Liberation Day.”

“We take care of countries all over the world. We pay for their military. We pay for everything they have to pay. And then when you want to cut back a little bit, they get upset that you’re not taking care of them any longer,” the president said.

The negotiating document showed that administration officials planned to push several governments including Taiwan, India and Indonesia to increase their defense spending or to buy more US military hardware.

Such national security considerations may help explain why most countries did not retaliate against the U.S. with their own tariffs on American goods, said Phil Luck, director of the economics program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“They don’t think this is just an economic competition. They’re concerned we will escalate above that [and] pull out of NATO or change troop deployments,” said Luck, who served as the State Department’s deputy chief economist in the Biden administration.

Indeed, some Trump officials envisioned using the trade negotiations to contain Chinese strategic influence.

Administration officials hoped that Trump’s threat of a 49 percent tariff on Cambodian goods would persuade government officials in Phnom Penh to allow the “US Navy to conduct annual (or bi-annual) ship visits and training exercises at Ream Naval Base” in southwestern Cambodia.

Washington had grown concerned over a Chinese naval presence at the facility, which offers direct access to the contested South China Sea. The US wanted the Cambodian government to prohibit Chinese military “deployments outside of Ream,” the document said.

Israeli officials were to be pushed “to remove Chinese port ownership in Haifa,” a coastal city in northern Israel. In 2015, China’s Shanghai International Port Group, a majority state-owned company, won a 25-year contract to operate a new automated container-handling facility there.

US concerns over the Chinese presence in Haifa date to the Biden administration. U.S. Navy vessels have often docked at an Israeli navy base that is adjacent to the commercial port.

US officials also worried about another port under Chinese control in the northern Australian city of Darwin, which hosts about 2500 US Marines on a rotational deployment. China’s Landbridge Group signed a 99-year lease to operate the Australian port in 2015.

US negotiators wanted a “signal” from the Australian government of its “intent to revisit its arrangement on the operation of the Port of Darwin by a China-backed firm.” During the Australian election campaign this year, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged to return the port to local ownership.

But port worries were just one element of a broader anti-China proposal.

In East Africa, the administration wanted Madagascar to refuse to permit “China to establish military bases and expand military cooperation.” Another East African nation, the tiny island of Mauritius, should conduct a study on removing telecom equipment made by China’s Huawei, ZTE and Hikvision from its telecom and surveillance networks. And officials wanted Argentina to consult with U.S. experts about implementing “control measures” at Chinese space installations in that country to “ensure their exclusively civilian use.”

The draft also suggested ways the U.S. government could prioritize the interests of specific companies. In Lesotho, a poor southern African nation that Trump had threatened with 50 percent tariffs, negotiators wanted the government to finalize deals with “multiple US firms.”

OnePower, a renewable energy start-up, should be granted “a five-year withholding tax exemption” and a license to develop a 24-megawatt project. Regulators should waive a legal requirement for Starlink, Musk’s satellite-based internet provider, to provide a physical address in Lesotho before conducting business there, the document said.

In mid-April, Newsday, a newspaper in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, reported that there was no evidence of a Starlink office at the location the company had given as its registered address, “raising serious legal and regulatory concerns.”

In Israel, US officials wanted the government not to “proceed with any draft regulations or potential plans to force Chevron to sell its interests or status as operator in one of its offshore natural gas fields.”

The Houston-based energy company has been operating in Israel since 2020.

“Chevron engages regularly with government officials and key stakeholders at home and abroad as a normal course of business. While we do not discuss details, our conversations always focus on the benefits we believe we bring to the communities where we operate, including the Eastern Mediterranean,” Chevron said when asked if it had requested US government help.

The administration continues to leverage trade talks for broader gains. McCoy Pitt, the senior official in the State Department’s international organisation affairs bureau, wrote the secretary of state this month about linking trade talks with hopes of killing a global climate change deal.

Pitt urged Rubio to approve a strategy before a scheduled October vote by members of the International Maritime Organization on limiting greenhouse gas emissions by large container ships. The UN agency in April approved draft regulations, which the State Department memo described as a “global carbon tax.”

Pitt’s memo, titled “Protecting US Shipping Interests by Defeating the International Maritime Organization’s ‘Net-Zero Framework,’” said that as part of any trade deal with the US, countries “are instructed” or “would be expected” to vote against the IMO proposal.

Through an online portal, the State Department said: “We do not comment on purportedly leaked documents. We do, however, look forward to the story on how the Trump Administration is using reciprocal trade negotiations to benefit and fight for the American people.”

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