Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Trump will sign two executive orders attacking the nation's trade deficit on Friday, targeting trade agreements, intellectual property theft and $2.8 billion in unpaid duties.

Administration officials touted the action as the most comprehensive attempt to address the trade deficit in modern history.

"These actions are designed to let the world know that this is a president taking another step to fulfill his campaign promise," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at the White House Thursday night. He'll be charged with leading a three-month effort to identify the underlying causes of the trade deficit by country, product and industry — a study that could lead to legal action or renegotiation of trade deals.

The orders come a week before President Trump’s meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago retreat, and Trump has already said the meeting confront difficult questions about the trade deficit. But even though China is the largest source of that deficit — $336.2 billion worth of goods and services in 2015 — and also the biggest offender on dumping, administration officials say it’s not about any one country.

"Nothing we’re saying about tonight is about China," said Peter Navarro, the director of Trump's National Trade Council and the author of Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – A Global Call to Action. "This is about trade abuses."

And the actions Trump will take Friday won't target China as a currency manipulator, an action Trump promised he would take during the campaign. Instead, Ross said, the administration will look at "currency misalignment," not manipulation. "It doesn’t have to be something that's done intentionally," he said.

The administration will also investigate other forms of "cheating or other inappropriate behavior" by other countries, including illegal dumping, subsidies, or overcapacity.

And consistent with Trump's agenda of America-First economic nationalism, Trump will direct the administration to look at whether the legal frameworks of trade, including bilateral trade agreements and World Trade Organization actions, are working against the United States, Ross said.

"While many countries talk about free trade, they’re actually far more protectionist than we are," he said.

Like most Trump executive orders, his actions on trade won't have an immediate effect. He will direct a report in 90 days, but Ross said the administration won't necessarily wait that long to take action. And Ross emphasized that there's no preconceived outcome to the process. "Undoubtedly with some of the countries, we'll conclude that there's no real action that should be taken," he said.

For example: "Some of our trade deficit comes from the fact that we import a lot of oil. That portion of our imports is real, and it has nothing to do with any bad behavior" on the part of oil exporters, he said. "Also, some products are just not made in the United States, so it’s hard to say someone is an evildoer if they’re making a product we can't."

One specific step Trump has already decided on is stricter enforcement of anti-dumping and countervailing duties, the penalties that the U.S. already imposes on importers who violate trade rules. But those importers can often go out of business before the duties are collected, and customs agents don't always require them to post a bond to cover any shortfall. Since 2001, that amount is about $2.8 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The orders will also target enforcement of pirated and counterfeited intellectual property owned by U.S. companies, he said.