Soft tone on OIL by Wilburr RossCommerce Secretary Wilbur Ross repeatedly emphasized that this report will provide the White House with an empirical basis on which to make decisions about trade. It will allow the Trump administration take a "measured and analytical approach" and not do anything too casually or abruptly, he said. "What's driving it is that the U.S. has the lowest tariff rates and the lowest non-tariff barriers of any developed country. While other countries talk about free trade, they actually are far more protectionist than we are," Ross said on Thursday. It's likely that the report will find multiple reasons for the trade deficit, which Ross said could include lax enforcement, asymmetrical rules or currency misalignment. He said, however, that in some instances, the report will find that no real action should be taken because the deficit with a particular country isn't related to bad behavior. The U.S. isn't oil self-sufficient, so it imports a lot of the commodity, Ross said. In other cases, there may be an imbalance simply because other countries are better at manufacturing a specific product or can do so more cheaply than the U.S. The second executive order seeks to deal with what Peter Navarro, head of the National Trade Council, called the "long-festering problem of undercollection of anti-dumping and countervailing duties." Both types of tariffs aim to protect the competitiveness for U.S. products, by bridging the gap between cheaper imports and American manufactured goods.