"Fair means we treat our trading partners the way they treat us," Cohn told a conference on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings in Washington on Thursday. "If you want to insist on having a tariff on a product, which we prefer you not, the president believes that we should treat you in a reciprocal fashion and that we should tax your product coming into the United States."

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)