The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up a Democratic resolution Wednesday demanding that the White House turn over all internal documents pertaining to its decision to levy 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent ones on aluminum ones. The request is meant to help understand what was going on behind the scenes at the White House as President Trump prepared to take on China on trade.
The binding resolution, introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., calls for “any and all documents in draft or final form, including reports, memos, spreadsheets, and slide deck presentations” relating to the process for the creating the tariffs. It also demands documents relating to “any actions the Administration has considered taking to offset harm to United States exporters facing tariffs that have been or will be imposed by other countries in response to United States tariffs.”
Pascrell, while generally supportive of a more aggressive trade policy against China, has argued that the administration’s handling of the policy has been worrisome.
“After being harmed by decades of corrosive policies, we need a trade policy that is meticulously planned and carefully executed for the American worker,” Pascrell told the Washington Examiner. “Much of the Trump administration has been beset with chaos. Our national trade policy has been no exception to this disorder. Passing my resolution of inquiry can help give us answers to find coherence in the administration’s chaos.”
The current administration’s process has been portrayed as erratic in some insider accounts. In a forthcoming book, author Bob Woodward reports that Gary Cohn, former economic adviser to President Trump, stole a document off of the president’s desk in the oval office in order to prevent the White House from exiting a trade deal with South Korea and reportedly claimed he would do the same thing to prevent Trump from exiting the the North American Free Trade Agreement.
To bind the president, the resolution would have to pass the the full House next and then the Senate as well, a hurdle Pascrell’s effort would be unlikely to meet given the Congress’ Republican control.
In addition to the steel and aluminum tariffs, the White House has hit China with tariffs of 25 percent on $50 billion worth of goods and is expected to add and $200 billion worth of products to that list. Beijing has responded by placing tariffs of between 5 and 25 percent on $60 billion worth of U.S goods to date.
