WASHINGTON: US allies seeking to avoid the steel and aluminum tariffs approved by President Donald Trump might be asked to step up their financial commitments to NATO.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC in a Friday interview that the president will consider national security, noting that Trump wants to be sure that NATO gets more funding from European allies who Trump has previously criticized for not contributing enough.
“If we’re in NATO, he wants to make sure that NATO gets more money so that NATO can protect all of us and fulfill its goal,” Mnuchin said, underscoring Trump’s push to get NATO allies to pay 2 percent on defense.
Trump drew on rarely used national security grounds to place a 25 percent tax on steel imports and 10 percent tax on imported aluminum. Only Canada and Mexico — both partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement being renegotiated — were excluded from the tariffs.
The Treasury secretary said he has been speaking with his foreign counterparts and “my expectation is there may be some other countries that he considers in the next two weeks.”
Other countries seeking exemptions from the tariffs will have to make their case through US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, but the president will make the ultimate decision, a senior administration official told reporters Thursday. Specific steel and aluminum products could also be excluded and that authority will rest with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Lighthizer was expected to be in Brussels this weekend for meetings with European and Japanese trade officials.
The EU has warned that it could retaliate with tariffs on US steel, agricultural and other products, such as peanut butter, cranberries and orange juice.
Trump suggested before he signed the orders imposing the tariffs that Australia and “other countries” could also be exempted. He discussed the tariffs by telephone on Friday with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia and President Mauricio Macri of Argentina, the White House said.
P. Welles Orr, senior trade adviser at the law firm Miller & Chevalier, said foreign governments are already asking how the exemption process will work.
“The short answer is, we don’t know the specifics yet,” said Orr, who was assistant US trade representative in President George H.W. Bush’s administration. “It’s certainly going to be chaotic ... The business community sure hopes the administration will carefully do all the work it needs to do to make this an easy and transparent process.”
Philip Levy, a former trade adviser in President George W. Bush’s administration, said the flaw in Trump basing his tariffs on national security was that military allies could ask to be excluded, undermining the president’s stated purpose of protecting domestic steel and aluminum mill jobs.
With national security as the primary issue, it would be hard to apply the tax to South Korea and Australia, meaning that they could ultimately land on Russia more than almost any other country, said Levy, now at adjunct professor at Northwestern University.
The proclamation signed by Trump ordering the tariffs do suggest some possible grounds for exemptions based off the specific reasons listed for excluding Canada and Mexico.
Those two countries were excluded due to “shared” commitments on national security and the reduction of excess production of steel worldwide, a provision aimed mainly at state-backed Chinese companies that Trump blames for having flooded the world with cheap steel.
The proclamation also notes how closely linked the United States, Canada and Mexico are, both economically and in terms of being physically next to each other.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate oversight committee, launched a review of the president’s decision to impose the tariffs, asking Ross for a “detailed cost analysis” of the impact on the economy, how employment levels were factored into the decision and national security concerns.
US may tie NATO contributions to tariff exemptions
US may tie NATO contributions to tariff exemptions
Private sector dynamism driving labor market growth in Saudi Arabia, landmark report says
RIYADH: A “structural shift” in the Saudi economy has led to the share of citizens employed in the private sector reaching 52.8 percent, surpassing the 51.4 percent target, according to a landmark report.
Prepared in collaboration with the Global Labor Market Conference, World Bank Group and the Kingdom’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, the release titled “A Decade of Progress,” offers an analytical overview of the nation’s job market transformation over the past decade.
Figures as of the second quarter of 2025 showed the Kingdom was not only ahead of its target for the year for the share of Saudis working in the private sector, but only 5.5 percentage points away from the Saudi Vision 2030 goal of 58.3 percent.
The analysis also highlights a structural shift in the role of the private sector in Saudi Arabia’s job market, particularly among women.
Strengthening the private sector and enhancing women’s participation in the workforce is a crucial goal outlined in the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 agenda, as the nation is steadily pursuing its economic diversification efforts by reducing its dependence on crude revenues.
“The private sector is now one of the driving forces behind new job growth in Saudi Arabia, in line with its economic diversification vision. Employment ratios increased as inactive individuals moved into jobs, driving a notable drop in Saudi unemployment and expanding the productive workforce,” said Cristobal Ridao-Cano, practice manager for social protection and labor in the Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan at the World Bank.
He added: “The knowledge attained from Saudi Arabia’s transformation model can be transferred to other countries.”
The Kingdom has the goal of increasing the share of Saudi citizens employed in the private sector to 58.3 percent by the end of this decade.
According to the report, the share of employment in micro-enterprises increased from 6 percent in 2015 to 26 percent of total employment by 2025, underscoring the sector’s vitality.
This improvement was supported by a sustained decline in labor market mismatch over the decade, and an increase in education-to-job matching from 41 percent in 2015 to 62 percent in 2025, reducing skills-related barriers to employment.
“Labor market frictions also declined, reflected in a notable rise in job-to-job transitions and increased labor mobility toward private sector firms,” added the study.
According to the analysis, the Kingdom witnessed a notable expansion in the productive labor force, driven by an increase in participation to 67.1 percent by 2025.
Saudi Arabia’s overall unemployment rate recorded a significant decline, reaching 2.8 percent by mid-2025, as increasing numbers of economically inactive individuals moved directly into occupations.
Female employment increased from 11 percent in 2015 to 32 percent in 2025, while work among mothers rose from 8 percent to 45 percent over the same period.
The employment rate in the category of youth, aged between 18 and 24, increased from 10 percent in 2015 to 33 percent in 2025, while the share of youth not in education, employment, or training declined from 40 percent to 25 percent during the same period.
The report also highlighted a significant shift in social norms and job search preferences.
From 2015 to 2025, the share of individuals unwilling to work declined from 49 percent to 12 percent, while the preference gap between the public and private sectors narrowed considerably.
The share of jobseekers who were exclusively seeking public sector jobs fell from 60 percent to 10 percent for men, and from 48 percent to 22 percent for women.
A large share of jobseekers now target private sector opportunities, reflecting stronger alignment between work preferences and actual job search behavior.
“Social norms related to women’s employment also shifted substantially. Acceptance of women working in mixed-gender workplaces has increased, directly contributing to higher female employment in private sector companies, expanding opportunities available to women, and strengthening their integration into the labor market,” added the report.
