The Israeli Economic Newspaper Globes reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not seem to have succeeded in persuading US President Donald Trump to exempt Israel from his new policy related to customs duties during their meeting at the White House yesterday.
The customs duties are scheduled to enter into force this week, and the basic customs duties on imports to the United States are 10%, while the customs duties imposed on Israel are 17%.
According to the newspaper, in the Israeli Finance Ministry, Netanyahu was expected to try to persuade Trump to completely exclude Israel from the new policy, but the American president did not abide by this, and when asked whether Israel would get an exemption, he said: “Maybe not. Do not forget that we are helping Israel a lot. We give Israel $ 4 billion annually. This is a large amount,” referring to US military aid to Israel.
“We were deceived and exploited by many countries over the years, and we are no longer able to continue,” Trump added.
Israel’s exports to America
According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the value of Israel’s exports from commodities to the United States (including diamonds) in 2024 amounted to 17.2 billion dollars, while the value of its imports from the United States amounted to 9.2 billion dollars.
Israel’s trade surplus with its largest United States with any country, by a large difference, is in return, in return, Israel’s commercial deficit in goods with China reached $ 800 million in 2024.
For his part, Netanyahu promised to remove all customs duties and other commercial barriers facing American exports to Israel, and Netanyahu said, while commenting on the cancellation of customs duties: “We intend to do this very quickly … We believe that this is the right decision, and it will also remove commercial barriers.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fxbo3kc6xi
On his visit to Washington, Netanyahu was accompanied by a foreign leader after announcing the customs duties policy, his economic advisor Avi Samon, but was not accompanied by representatives of the Ministry of Finance, and Netanyahu met with commerce Minister Howard Lootnick and American commercial actor Gameson Ghrir before his meeting with Trump.
The Israeli Ministry of Finance announced these steps last week, in the hope of avoiding the imposition of American customs duties on Israel, but to no avail, and the reform of “Good for Europe is good for Israel”, which angered the American administration, so that it is automatically approved to import products that meet American standards to Israel.
Mono
The Minister of Finance in Salamil Smotrich signed an order to cancel Israeli customs duties on imports from the United States, and this requires the approval of the Knesset Finance Committee (Parliament), however, the customs duties on American goods are very small, and are about 42 million shekels annually. Related customs duties are mainly imposed on agricultural products.
The reform of “Good for Europe is good for Israel” is applied in the fields of standards, food and energy efficiency in electrical products, and cosmetics, things that affect imports.
The principle of “good for Europe is good for Israel” means that any product that meets European regulations and/or is sold in Europe can be sold in Israel without the need to conduct additional tests.
In announcing the interest rate yesterday, the Bank of Israel stated: “The exports of commodities will be affected to the United States, which constitute about 13% of the total exports of goods and services, largely by the customs duties imposed by the American government, in addition to that other export components will be negatively affected by the damage that will be caused by global trade.”
