Steel, aluminum targets for tariffs
Trump prepares levies for imported metals
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in response to what he called decades of unfair trade policies.
Trump summoned steel and aluminum executives to the White House and told them that next week he would levy penalties of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports. Those tariffs, he said, will remain for “a long period of time.”
“What’s been allowed to go on for decades is disgraceful. It’s disgraceful,” Trump said during a meeting in the Cabinet Room. “You will have protection for the first time in a long while and you’re going to regrow your industries,” he said.
The possibility of an announcement, on an issue overseen by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, caught some top White House officials off guard and left several aides scrambling for details.
Key Senate offices also did not receive advanced warning that Trump was expected to announce a decision before April deadlines.
Increased foreign production, especially by China, has driven down prices and hurt American producers, creating a situation the Commerce Department says poses a national security threat.
Any action to impose tariffs is likely to escalate simmering tensions with China and other U.S. trading partners. Critics of such a move fear that other countries will retaliate or use national security as a pretext to impose trade penalties of their own. They also argue that sanctions on imports will drive up prices and hurt U.S. automakers and other companies that use steel or aluminum.
The Commerce Department had recommended tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, higher tariffs on imports from specific countries or a quota on imports.
Trump last year ordered an investigation into whether aluminum and steel imports posed a threat to national defense. Ross said last month that the imports “threaten to impair our national security,” noting, for example, that only one U.S. company now produces a highquality aluminum alloy needed for military aircraft.