Report: Chamber details impact of tariffs on US states

However, the campaign “may not influence Trump’s determination to levy the tariffs”, Sun said.

Douglas H. Paal, vice-president of the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the chamber’s drive is a “worthy and necessary” effort.

“But I doubt it will have an immediate effect. Maybe after Trump’s tariffs come up short and fail to deliver results, the campaign will register with policymakers,” Paal told China Daily.

Euijin Jung, a research analyst with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said the chamber’s campaign may serve to generate pressure in some key states.

The group’s analysis of the harm each US state could suffer from retaliation by US trading partners, including potential job losses caused by a trade war, is likely to draw the attention of business people and farmers in Republican states, where Trump’s protectionism agenda was popular during his presidential campaign.

“A timely planned campaign of the US chamber would generate a good amount of pressure on Congress and Trump,” Jung said.

Earlier, analysts assumed that the only way Trump would change his approach was if there was a major drop in the stock market or economy.

On Monday, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said President Trump would not shift his trade policies based on stock market fluctuations.

Wall Street ended higher on Monday after a choppy session, with gains by Apple and other technology stocks offsetting worries about an escalating trade war between Washington and its trading partners, Reuters reported.

“There’s no bright line level of the stock market that’s going to change policy,” Ross told CNBC.

Also on Monday, during a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the White House, Trump said the World Trade Organization has treated the US “very badly, and I hope they change their ways”.

Asked if the US would quit the WTO, the president said he wasn’t “planning anything now”, but if the WTO doesn’t treat the US properly, “we will be doing something,” according to a White House press release.