Ratcheting up the international trade tension further, the Trump administration said that at the end of the week it would announce a final list of Chinese products to be tariffed. It plans to introduce tariffs on $50bn (€42.5bn) of imports from China, as its first target. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2018This was the basis of Trump’s recent tariffs on steel and aluminium and it enabled him to skirt around all the normal rules of international trade agreements. The concern is that if unchallenged, the president may use the national security threat as the reason to introduce tariffs on any imports. In 2015, the US’s top-five sources of pharmaceutical imports by value were Ireland, Germany, the UK, Switzerland, and India.

Source: Irish Examiner June 11, 2018 05:15 UTC