Breaking comments from US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on CNBC

• Says a tariff removal likely coming today
• “I think it’s likely it will cover all USMCA-compliant goods and services,” he said of a delay on tariffs
• It’s not likely to be just the automakers
• Says “this comes from that Canada has offered us an enormous amount of work and so has Mexico”
• Said he and Trump would be speaking with their Mexican counterparts later Thursday “this morning”
• Expects the announcement today
• If you lived under Donald Trump’s USMCA agreement, you will get a reprieve now
• After April 2, we will move to reciprocal tariffs
• Hopefully by April 2, Mexico and Canada will have done enough

This looks like an end to the tariff war for now. The USMCA covers pretty much everything that crosses the border. He added some tough talk about dairy after April 2 but the reality is that within the USMCA there are very, very few tariffs, less than 0.5% of what crosses the border is subject to any kind of tariffs. So a one-month deferral followed by a ‘reciprocal’ regime pretty much ends it all, though we’ll see.

• Says over 50% of Mexico and Canada imports are USMCA compliant but he’s just guessing (I think he’s underestimating as it’s over 90%, though they might be trying to use some weird calculation)

Trudeau is quickly responding to Lutnick’s comments and says they’re ‘promising’ and align with some of the conversations he has been having with administration officials.

One caveat on the ‘end’ of the tariff war is that Trump’s admin has flirted with classifying Canada’s VAT tax (HST is what it’s called) as a tariff, which is ridiculous but that might be a game they play.

Separately, Lutnick made some very telling comments about robotics. He was pressed on how the US will be able to bring back factories and maintain competitiveness. He said it’s because robots will be doing the jobs.

Then he pivoted to saying there would be ‘millions’ of jobs supervising and maintaining those robots. That doesn’t make any sense because if the robots can build the machines, there can be robots to fix other robots. In any case, it highlights what the real plan for factories is — jobless factories. Robots are coming for every job.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.