US President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a meeting with leaders from the steel and aluminum manufacturing industries in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday. (EPA-EFE photo)
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump spoke out defiantly on Friday against global criticism of his plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, seeming to welcome the idea of a trade war.
“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump wrote in an early morning tweet.
“Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!” the president wrote.
“We must protect our country and our workers. Our steel industry is in bad shape. IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!”
After weeks of rumours and counter-rumours about his administration’s intentions, Trump on Thursday announced he would sign off on measures designed to protect US producers next week.
The tariffs — 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum — cover two materials that are the lifeblood of the construction and manufacturing sectors.
Asian countries are speaking out about their concerns over US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on steel and aluminum. (Reuters video)
The announcement was greeted with fury within key US trading allies such as Canada, the European Union, Australia and Mexico, as well as rival China.
It also caused jitters across global stock markets.
Critics raised the specter of a trade war, suggesting other countries will retaliate or use national security as a reason to impose trade penalties of their own.
Trump’s move will likely raise steel and aluminum prices here. That’s good for US manufacturers. But it’s bad for companies that use the metals, and it prompted red flags from industries ranging from tool and dye makers to beer distributors to manufacturers of air conditioners. The American International Automobile Dealers Association warned it would drive prices up “substantially.”
“This is going to have fallout on our downstream suppliers, particularly in the automotive, machinery and aircraft sectors,” said Wendy Cutler, a former US trade official who is now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “What benefits one industry can hurt another. What saves one job can jeopardise another.”
Steel-consuming companies said steel tariffs imposed in 2002 by President George W. Bush ended up wiping out 200,000 US jobs.
The decision had been strenuously debated within the White House, with top officials such as economic adviser Gary Cohn and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis raising concerns.
The penalties were pushed by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, an economist who has favoured taking aggressive action.
Mattis, in a memo to Commerce, said US military requirements for steel and aluminum represent about 3% of US production and that the department was “concerned about the negative impact on our key allies” of any tariffs. He added that targeted tariffs would be preferable to global quotas or tariffs.
Plans for Trump to make an announcement were thrown into doubt for a time because of the internal divisions. The actual event caught some top White House officials off guard and left aides scrambling for details. Key Senate offices also did not receive advance notice.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the decision “shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” noting that the president had been talking about it “for decades.”
But some Republicans in Congress were plainly upset.
“The president is proposing a massive tax increase on American families. Protectionism is weak, not strong,” said Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska. “You’d expect a policy this bad from a leftist administration, not a supposedly Republican one.”
GOP Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said, “Every time you do this, you get a retaliation and agriculture is the No. 1 target.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said through a spokesman he hoped Trump would “consider the unintended consequences of this idea and look at other approaches before moving forward.”
Trump met with more than a dozen executives, including representatives from US Steel Corp., Arcelor Mittal, Nucor, JW Aluminum and Century Aluminum. The industry leaders urged Trump to act, saying they had been unfairly hurt by a glut of imports.
“We are not protectionist. We want a level playing field,” said Dave Burritt, president and chief executive officer at US Steel.
