Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, first learned of the sudden announcement of far-reaching tariffs by President Donald Trump on Thursday during an informal hallway conversation with reporters.
“Oh yeah? He did that?” ]Hatch responded when he was told of Trump’s decision to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. “I don’t think that’s very wise.”
He wasn’t the only one who was caught off guard—most lawmakers found out about the decision when it became public, with no briefing from the White House beforehand.
Trump said in a meeting with steel and aluminum executives that he planned to sign an order to impose the tariffs next week. “We’ll be signing it in,” he pledged. “And you will have protection for the first time in a long while, and you’re going to regrow your industries.”
Details of implementation and questions of whether certain countries would be exempted from the tariffs were unclear.
Hatch later responded in a statement, calling the tariffs “a tax hike the American people don’t need and can’t afford.” He urged Trump to reconsider.
The Utah Republican’s initial surprise said less about him than it did about the increasingly unpredictable White House.
“Volatile is a good word for it,” Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, a member of the Finance subcommittee on international trade, customs, and global competitiveness, quipped when asked about the administration’s approach to trade policy on Thursday afternoon.
In fact, leading up to Trump’s casual announcement of the tariffs during his meeting with industry representatives on Thursday, the White House put out a variety of mixed messages about whether an announcement was coming or not.
On Wednesday night, Bloomberg reported that an announcement was imminent. But on Thursday morning, that was less certain. Republicans have sparred among themselves over the merits of the decision, with some — Defense Secretary James Mattis, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — arguing that such a move could set off retaliatory measures from other countries and lead to a harmful trade war. Others, including U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have pushed for protectionist actions.
Ross released his recommendations to the president on February 16, calling for remedies “to increase domestic steel production.” His report made specific mention of the Chinese steel industry — “On an average month, China produces nearly as much steel as the U.S. does in a year” — but most American steel imports come from Canada, and the tariffs Trump laid out during his meeting will have broader effects than curtailing China, which ranks 11th in steel imports to the United States. The announcement has potential to sour current NAFTA negotiations in Mexico City, which will continue through March 6.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average took a blow after Trump’s comments on Thursday afternoon, falling by 500 points.
Trump’s decision also left members of Congress, some of whom have long advised him against such protectionist trade measures, reeling.
“There is no standard operating practice with this administration,” Senate Republican Conference chairman John Thune told reporters when asked about Trump’s sudden announcement, according to Washington Post’s Erica Werner. “Every day is a new adventure for us.”
Libertarian Republican Justin Amash criticized Trump’s plan as a form of “corporate welfare.”
Steel and aluminum tariffs are corporate welfare. They benefit the few through a tax imposed on all Americans.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) March 1, 2018
Trump was authorized to make the decision absent congressional approval by claiming that steel and aluminum imports constitute a threat to national security under a little-used provision of the Trade Act of 1962.
Most Republicans who spoke with THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the issue raised concerns that the move could set off a trade war and harm American consumers. Sen. Ben Sasse responded in a statement, calling the tariffs “a massive tax increase on American families.”
“You’d expect a policy this bad from a leftist administration, not a supposedly Republican one,” he added. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders addressed Sasse’s remarks during a press conference Thursday afternoon, saying the president would not apologize for trying to help American workers—“and certainly not to Senator Sasse.”
But some American workers are preparing for ill effects to come as a result of the tariffs instead. Last month, 15 manufacturing associations, representing more thanover 1one million workers, sent a letter to the administration arguing that American steel and aluminum industries were enjoying financial success and were not in need of federal assistance.
“This is not an industry that warrants extraordinary and unprecedented relief from imports,” they wrote. “The cost of retaliation by our trading partners—many of them close and invaluable allies—could exceed any benefit that restrictions on steel imports under Section 232 might provide.”
