Every time Republican lawmakers meet with ultra-protectionist White House trade czar Peter Navarro, they have one overarching question for him: What is his long-term plan?
House Republicans tried and failed to get an answer out of him during a meeting on July 26, before members left town for the August recess. “I don’t know if I’m satisfied,” Utah Republican Mia Love told THE WEEKLY STANDARD afterward. “I guess I just don’t understand the strategy.”
Navarro will get another chance to answer the question when he meets with Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson on Tuesday afternoon. “I’m going to give him information. Hopefully he gives me some information and some insight,” Johnson told reporters Monday night. He said he plans to ask Trump’s foremost trade adviser, “What’s the game plan here?”
The senator argued that on a macroeconomic scale, Trump’s deregulation efforts and tax cuts have helped growth. But on a microeconomic scale, individual businesses and consumers are being seriously harmed by Trump’s sweeping tariffs of 25 and 10 percent on foreign steel and aluminum. That’s what he plans to emphasize in his conversation with Navarro. “I don’t want to undermine the negotiations, and I understand that they’re not going to give you the negotiating strategy to this,” said Johnson. “But I’d like to get some kind of comfort that they really do understand there’s a timeline pressure, there really is harm being done, and the longer this goes on, the more it will be permanent and it’ll just grow.”
The tariffs, implemented unilaterally by President Donald Trump under national security justifications provided by Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, have been met with pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill. After the White House announced it would use the same process to impose tariffs of 25 percent on automobile imports, opponents of the strategy grew even more vocal. But in the time since, their efforts to limit Trump’s trade powers have stalled in both chambers.
Johnson is a cosponsor of Tennessee Republican Bob Corker’s bill to give Congress a say in national security tariffs. A symbolic, non-binding version of that measure passed the Senate in early July, but congressional leaders have shown little interest in advancing one that would actually impact law, fearing backlash from Trump and his loyalists at the polls.
On Monday night, Johnson indicated movement on the issue is unlikely to occur before the November midterm elections.
“I doubt we’ll pass anything short-term, because I don’t think there’s the political capability of doing it,” he said. “Hopefully, long-term, people realize, maybe once we get past this moment — and it’s not directed at a particular administration — but we just overall say, no, we need to reclaim our constitutional authority on taxes, which is what tariffs are.”
