Dr. Tom McDonnell:

Of course it is. Trump believes in tariffs and has done so for more than 40 years, so he has a genuine belief they are a good policy idea for the States. What is important to Trump is that he is seen to have won the deal. That would suggest that he can be talked down by being given something relatively small provided he can present it as a win to his followers. That is difficult then because there is the question of what we would give him and whether it would be enough.

The other thing is that we have not reached the end game here. We do not know how this will play out. Trump saying we are going to have 20% or 30% is very different from getting to a point where the EU is threatening reciprocal tariffs at the same level, which will do a lot of damage to the US economy. Obviously, there has been a lot of discussion about Trump's personality and certain words have been used that I do not believe I would be allowed to use in this committee.