Stand tough on trade
It’s a start to give support to U.S. manufacturing
The Trump administration is taking a beating on its policy of standing up for American manufacturing. It must continue to stand firm.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross faced withering criticism in a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee last Wednesday over the administration’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, bluntly told Mr. Ross, “You are destroying markets — both foreign and domestic — for American businesses of all types, sorts and sizes.”
Reorienting America’s economy to stop letting cheap foreign-made products drive American manufacturers out of business, and workers into low-wage occupations, is going to take some time.
Mr. Ross spoke the truth: The actions taken by the president are necessary to revive America’s essential steel and aluminum industries. Moreover, to allow foreign imports to go unchecked is to allow the United States’ steel industry to wither away. This impairs our national security.
Imagine the U.S. having to retool for war and then trying to get steel from China for that war.
Mr. Trump campaigned to revive American heavy industry, and he won key manufacturing states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan as a result. His tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum, even against key U.S. allies Canada and the European Union, are only a starting point for a long-term policy. But they are a good starting point.
There is no more significant issue on which Mr. Trump promises to realign the traditional voting constituencies of the Republican and Democratic parties than trade. Historically, the Republican Party has been predominantly against protectionism, whereas Democrats once opposed global open-trade policies. Under Bill Clinton, that changed. The Democrats became freetraders and globalists, and failed to keep faith with American workers.
The hearing last week revealed that the tariffs are still creating alarm among Republicans. Pennsylvania’s Republican Sen. Pat Toomey claimed, in essence, that the national security claim is fake news. And Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said, “This thing [an aggressive trade stance] seems to be escalating out of control.”
But America has been reflexively globalist and anti-protectionist for a long time now, and it has not worked. The Rust Belt has been impoverished.
Mr. Trump is forcing a re-examination of America’s trade policies, and making other countries consider the consequences of the trade war they have long waged upon us. The goal is nothing less than the restart of U.S. industry and the reclamation of American jobs.