Step back on tariffs

The saving grace of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership style is that it sometimes leaves room for backtracking. Trump says his tariff measures won’t be final for a week, which means there might still be time for damage control. The key is to exempt close treaty allies such as Canada, Japan, Korea and Germany from the new tariffs. Not only is there no national security risk from importing their steel and aluminum, there would also be national security harm from weakening them economically and alienating them diplomatically. And Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ original proposal included a proviso allowing certain exemptions, based on “an overriding economic or security interest of the United States” or, in the case of aluminum, on “their willingness to work with the United States to address global excess capacity.”

Responsible leaders, both within the United States and among our allies, can and should spend the coming days doing everything possible to take advantage of such loopholes. If the end result were a package of tariffs on steel and aluminum from China and Russia, that would be a more acceptable outcome, both in terms of targeting actual sources of oversupply and in terms of clarifying U.S. geopolitical commitments. U.S. imports from those two countries are so small that protectionist measures against them could send a message at a relatively low economic cost. However, Ross’ proposal noted that reducing tariffs on certain countries would require raising them on everyone else, and possibly taking other steps.

In short, any refinement of Trump’s tariff plan would be a distant second-best solution, and even that is unachievable unless Trump compromises on the ideological objective that motivated his outburst in the first place. Nevertheless, the stability of a fragile international system hangs on that faint hope.