<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Trump administration officials said on Sunday that the president will press forward with his plans to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, amid growing criticism from some quarters overseas and on Capitol Hill that the move could plunge the U.S. headlong into an unwinnable trade war.<\/p>\n
British Prime Minister Theresa May and other European officials \u2014 along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress \u2014 said the tariffs will cause far-reaching damage and the last thing the global economy needs is a trade war.<\/p>\n
But the administration says Mr. Trump is merely following through on his tough campaign talk on trade and is predicting a negligible overall impact on U.S. consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an action, basically, to protect our national security and economic security,\u201d White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t have a country that can defend itself and prosper without an aluminum and steel industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump said last week that he plans to roll out tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports. Mr. Navarro predicted concrete action as soon as this week.<\/p>\n
He said some businesses could be exempted but no country would be excluded from the tariffs despite criticism from key U.S. allies such as Canada and Britain.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as you exempt one country, then you have to exempt another country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. said the announcement shouldn\u2019t have been shocking given Mr. Trump\u2019s rhetoric on trade during the 2016 campaign, when he repeatedly criticized multilateral pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you have to take the president at his word. He made campaign promises. He\u2019s pretty well-proven so far. He intends to keep his campaign promises,\u201d Mr. Ross said on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no reason to believe he\u2019s going to change his mind,\u201d Mr. Ross said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ross acknowledged that foreign officials have threatened to retaliate through tariffs of their own but said the $9 billion of tariffs in question is a fraction of 1 percent of the whole U.S. economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the European Union has talked about is some $3 billion or so of potential retaliation. That\u2019s an even smaller fraction of 1 percent of the economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the European Commission, warned that the EU might impose its own taxes on items such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles and bourbon \u2014 products that are near and dear to the economies of Wisconsin and Kentucky, the respective home states of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not sit idly while our industry is hit with unfair measures that put thousands of European jobs at risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mrs. May also raised concerns about the plans with Mr. Trump in a Sunday phone call, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the steel and aluminum tariffs would be \u201cabsolutely unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The announcement also sparked divisions within Mr. Trump\u2019s administration and prompted speculation that economic adviser Gary Cohn \u2014 who opposed the tariffs \u2014 could resign as a result.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ross said he didn\u2019t know anything about rumors of Mr. Cohn\u2019s resignation.<\/p>\n
\u201cGary was certainly part of the interagency process,\u201d he said. \u201cThe president likes to have dissenting views, likes to hear every side of everything because that way he makes sure that his final decision is the best-informed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s announcement also prompted strong pushback from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n
Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said Sunday that Mr. Trump is going about things the wrong way if his goal is to target Chinese flooding of the worldwide steel market.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re letting China off the hook. You\u2019re punishing the American consumer and our allies. You\u2019re making a huge mistake,\u201d Mr. Graham said on CBS\u2019s \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d \u201cGo after China, not the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Christopher Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, said the president\u2019s enthusiasm for opening a trade war with Europe is a gift to Russia, which would welcome conflict between the U.S. and its European allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I just think the president needs to understand that there are times when these targeted sanctions are necessary, but you\u2019ve got to do it at the right moment and you have to realize that none of it takes place in a vacuum,\u201d Mr. Murphy said on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move has won praise from some union groups and Democrats, though, who say the president is right to try to punish countries acting in bad faith when it comes to trade issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like where the president is going on this. I really do,\u201d Sen. Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, said on CBS.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about fair trade,\u201d Mr. Manchin said. \u201cFree trade hasn\u2019t worked well for West Virginia. It really hasn\u2019t. We have lost thousands of jobs. And we\u2019re [talking] about a fairness to the system.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trump administration officials said on Sunday that the president will press forward with his plans to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, amid growing criticism from some quarters overse Trump administration officials said on Sunday that the president will press forward with his plans to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[336,34],"class_list":["post-2587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","tag-harley-davidson","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}