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First, other countries can accept tariffs on their exports to the United States without retaliation, providing revenue to the U.S. Treasury to finance public goods provision. Critically, retaliation will exacerbate rather than improve the distribution of burdens and make it even more difficult for us to finance global public goods.
Second, they can stop unfair and harmful trading practices by opening their markets and buying more from America;
Third, they can boost defense spending and procurement from the U.S., buying more U.S.-made goods, and taking strain off our servicemembers and creating jobs here;
Fourth, they can invest in and install factories in America. They won’t face tariffs if they make their stuff in this country;
Fifth, they could simply write checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods.
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This is all extremely vague, and Japan and Korea have absolutely not "caved in" on this basis. Japan and Korea talking to the US; the EU did too, and Trump refused their zero-for-zero offer. But if those talks come to nothing, which seems likely, then Japan and Korea will absolutely introduce retaliatory tariffs, too; the game theory of the thing makes it more or less inevitable.
Neither South Korea nor Japan are retliating and they sent delegation to "negotiate", which in context means to see what concessions they can offer to try to remove or lower the new tariffs.
That's pretty much "caving in", but that's also expect: Both countries are not strong enough and too dependent on the US to do otherwise.
The EU is not yet retaliating (the tariffs mentioned in the article are retaliation for the US's steel and aluminium tariffs from last month, not the most recent batch), and is negotiating; as I mention there was a zero-for-zero option. Retaliation for the current round of tariffs is currently under discussion.
Make no mistake, it'll be the same in Japan and SK. At least the credible threat of retaliation, if not retaliation already in action (the China approach) is required for any real negotiation.
