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Bessent: More Than 75 Countries Have Come Forward to Negotiate on Tariffs

April 9, 2025 · The White House · 0:01:38

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke at the White House about the tariff negotiating strategy President Trump had implemented a week earlier. Bessent said the strategy had brought more than 75 countries forward to negotiate, and that it took great courage for the president to stay the course to that moment, as he stated it.

Bessent repeated the message he said he gave a week earlier in the same spot: do not retaliate and you will be rewarded. He said countries that come to negotiate would go down to a 10 percent baseline tariff, while China would be raised to 125 percent due to its insistence on escalation. He said he was not calling it a trade war, but that China had escalated and President Trump responded courageously, signaling that the president cares about trade and wants to negotiate in good faith.

He said each negotiation would be separate and bespoke, and that discussions would cover tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, currency manipulation, and subsidization of labor and industry, as he stated it.

Why it matters

Bessent’s remarks are the Treasury Department’s first full public framing of the tariff endgame — a 10 percent baseline for negotiating partners and a sharply higher rate for China — announced the week the strategy took effect.

Scoreboard watch

The figures Bessent stated — more than 75 countries coming forward, a 10 percent baseline tariff, and 125 percent for China — are the dated benchmarks of the tariff strategy as announced.

Sources: The White House, “🇺🇸 Secretary Scott Bessent “The successful negotiating strategy that POTUS implemented””, 2025-04-09 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-04-09). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.