Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that imposing tariffs on U.S. allies is all about fairness.
“For too long, America has allowed the free trade framework to become distorted to the advantages of countries other than the United States,” Pompeo told the Detroit Economic Club Monday afternoon. “It’s a simple moral principle, this idea of fairness.”
Trump invoked a national security provision of federal trade law to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imported from Mexico, Canada, and the European Union, among others. The decision provoked frustration at the latest G-7 summit of industrialized democracies in Canada, and opposition from some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But Pompeo defended the move as a response to “asymmetric trade relationships” with American allies.
“They need to lower their trade barriers,” Pompeo said. “They need to accept our vegetables, our beef, our fruit, our machine products. These are non-tariff barriers that ought not to exist if free and fair trade is to be achieved.”
The tariff controversy turned into a personal war of words between Trump’s team and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who dismissed the national security argument for the tariffs as “kind of insulting” in light of the long-standing alliance.
“Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around,” he said during a press conference.
Trump’s team seemed surprised the comments, with White House adviser Peter Navarro subsequently saying Trudeau had earned “a special place in hell” through the comments; the aide subsequently apologized.
But Pompeo said the controversy has an easy solution. “We are happy to have zero percent tariffs on every product; we are happy to eliminate all subsidies; we’d be thrilled to see non-tariff barriers eliminated in their entirety,” he said Monday. “if every country does that, we will too, and I am confident we will grow America.”
