Where is the “reciprocity”? Israeli officials were stunned that despite their preemptive maneuvering to avert American trade barriers, President Trump slapped them with a high tariff. Can they now negotiate their way out? 

Alone among the world’s countries, Israel announced on Tuesday that it intends to cancel all tariffs on American imports. Yet, as Mr. Trump produced a “liberation day” chart of tariffs on world countries. Jerusalem saw that America would charge 17 percent on imported Israeli goods. 

“We are in danger,” the president of Israel’s manufacturers association, Ron Tomer, told Kann News. His association, he said, was in touch with the finance and economy ministers, weighing how to soften the blow. Yet, can the Trump administration be talked down from applying punitive measures on foreign friends as well as foes?

“The president is not going to back off what he announced yesterday,” the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told CNN Thursday. Yet, he hinted that negotiations might be possible, and that “countries can fix their non-tariff methods.” 

Jerusalem is reviewing “the possible effects of the plan on the Israeli economy,” its finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, wrote on X, “both in terms of risks and opportunities, and various economic scenarios.” The ministry, he added, “is maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the American administration with the aim of reducing the scope of the tariffs and reducing their impact on Israeli industry.” 

Israelis believe that they might be able to soften the blow to their economy by appealing to the ties between the countries. “We might even be able to benefit while Europe is losing out,” an economist, Hagai Golan, told i24 television. Other economists noted that the announced American tariffs were on goods, while services are not being targeted.

While Israeli exports to America of such goods as diamonds, medicine, and electronic equipment — estimated at $22 billion a year — can be hurt by the tariff, other exports, especially in the high-tech and software fields, might be exempt. Israeli arms exporters have “long preferred America, and they could easily re-list as American companies,” an economist at Tel Aviv university, Alex Kumen, told Israel’s Channel 12.

America and Israel signed a free trade agreement four decades ago that already removed tariffs on 98 percent of American imports. Announcing Tuesday the intention to cancel all remaining barriers to American imports, Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a statement that it would “enable us to further strengthen the alliance and ties between Israel and the United States.” For now, though, the move has fallen flat.  

“Countries better not retaliate,” the secretary of treasury, Scott Bessent, said Thursday. Far from retaliating, Israel attempted to bend over backward to appease Washington. Yet it was not spared. Is that a signal to other countries to end protectionist measures?