DeLauro and Warren Demand Answers on Trump Administration’s Secret Trade Negotiations

Today, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a letter to the Trump Administration demanding answers on the bilateral trade negotiations that President Trump has claimed to be conducting. The legislators wrote:

"As President Trump continues to wreak havoc on the global economy, we are particularly concerned about the bilateral "negotiations"-allegedly with over 75 countries-that President Trump claims were the intended outcome of his reciprocal tariffs. President Trump asserted that his decision to announce, then quickly reverse and delay, reciprocal tariffs allowed the administration to engage in discussions to renegotiate trade deals-despite having stated just days earlier that the tariffs were "permanent."

"The Trump administration has created additional economic uncertainty with these so-called negotiations: we do not know who the administration is negotiating with, what its strategic goals are, whether it will offer any concessions, and what it is specifically asking for. Nor has the administration provided any indication that it will obtain congressional approval of the resulting trade deals, despite Congress's authority "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations" and "lay and collect Taxes, Duties." Instead, the public has been left completely in the dark on the status of these negotiations-or forced to rely on vague, second-hand accounts of private meetings, including those that Secretary Bessent is reportedly holding with well-connected industry insiders. The administration's trade policy has wreaked havoc on the economy, while creating fresh opportunities for corporations and billionaires to secure special treatment and lucrative exemptions, and these closed-door bilateral talks are already yielding more of the same."

Full text of the letter and questions for the Administration are available here.