WASHINGTON >> Before President Donald Trump’s next big trade move, his administration invited companies to weigh in on the economic barriers they faced abroad.

The list of complaints was both sprawling and specific. In hundreds of letters submitted to the administration in recent weeks, producers of uranium, shrimp, T-shirts and steel highlighted the unfair trade treatment they faced, in hopes of bending the president’s trade agenda in their favor. The complaints varied from Brazil’s high tariffs on ethanol and pet food, to India’s high levies on almonds and pecans, to Japan’s long-standing barriers to American potatoes.

Trump has promised to overhaul the global trading system on April 2, when he plans to impose what he is calling “reciprocal tariffs” that will match the levies and other policies that countries impose on U.S. exports. The president has taken to calling this “liberation day,” arguing that it will end years of other countries “ripping us off.”

“It’s a liberation day for our country, because we’re going to be getting back a lot of the wealth that we so foolishly gave up to other countries,” Trump said last week.

The president had floated the idea of also announcing sector-specific tariffs on cars, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors that same day. On Monday, White House officials said those additional tariffs had not yet been set for April 2 but that the situation remained very fluid.

One official said separate tariffs on cars could still happen on April 2. Another official said that if tariffs on cars and other sectors did not happen on April 2, they could still be imposed at a later date.

Still, the price of imported cars, medicines and semiconductors will probably go up through Trump’s reciprocal tariff plan.

The reciprocal tariff plan has created a tricky calculus for many companies, which want to see trade barriers erased but fear ending up at the center of a trade war that could make them worse off. That is because Trump’s high-stakes approach could generate efforts by other countries to make deals with the United States and drop their own tariffs — or it could invite retaliation that ends up closing off foreign markets to American products.

Some American companies see an opportunity in Trump’s agenda. Many of the letters that companies submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in recent weeks asked officials to fight for lower trade barriers on their behalf, highlighting the high levies, onerous inspections or other complications American exporters face in foreign markets.

But others appear hesitant to put themselves in the president’s crosshairs. Some industry representatives say privately that companies have been nervous that raising their hands for help could put them at the center of coming trade spats, disrupting the export markets they depend on and potentially making them a target for retaliation.

Publicly, many of America’s biggest exporters — like the trade groups that represent exporters of pork, soybeans and oil — tempered their filings with cautionary words about the harm that could come from disrupting export markets. Major business groups also continued to urge the administration to reduce trade barriers rather than raise them, and focus on striking new trade agreements that would open up foreign markets.

“The administration’s work on reciprocity should result in the removal, not the creation, of barriers to trade,” the Consumer Technology Association, which represents technology companies, said in its letter to the trade representative. The group said it was “deeply concerned” that tariff threats against Europe would “increase global barriers to trade and dismantle the global trading system.”

Other groups seemed to be aware that the information they were handing the Trump administration could become ammunition in a trade war in which they could be casualties. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the information it was submitting on trade barriers was “not intended to justify the application of broad-based tariffs but should help U.S. negotiators to focus on specific issues of importance to American businesses of all sizes.”

It remains to be seen whether these submissions will have much influence over Trump, who has a history of basing trade policy on his impulses and intuition. But the quantity and variety of the responses highlight the enormous challenge for the Trump administration as it tries to figure out how to put its own imprint on the global trading system with just a few weeks of preparation. And it hints at the controversy that may be awaiting the administration once it finally reveals the details of a still-ill-defined trade policy.

Trump has suggested that his forthcoming tariffs could be sweeping and influential. But for now, even the basic question of whether the administration’s efforts will result in higher or lower barriers to trade remains unanswered.