Toomey bucks White House on trade policy
Says Trump’s tariffs could spark trade war
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey has been a reliable supporter of Trump administration policies, but he has broken ranks with the White House over tariffs.
The Pennsylvania Republican’s position is consistent with his longheld support of free-market economics. What’s unusual, though, is that he has been outspoken about his disagreement with President Donald Trump, including in televised interviews in which he has said the president is playing a dangerous game that could spark a trade war.
Mr. Trump was able to unilaterally impose tariffs on steel and aluminum after the Commerce Department declared access to those commodities a national security issue, citing the military’s reliance on them for equipment.
Those tariffs are “a huge mistake,” Mr. Toomey told Bloomberg TV Tuesday.
“I’m in favor of a mutual and reciprocal winding down of tariffs, but unfortunately, with respect to Canada and Mexico, that doesn’t seem to be the administration’s goal. It seems to be they want to sort of intimidate these countries into making concessions that will end up” to be worse than the North American Free Trade Agreement, he said.
Now Mr. Toomey is part of a bipartisan Senate coalition trying to dilute the White House’s power to invoke national security as a justification for tariffs. Frequent Trump critic Bob Corker, RTenn., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., are the other prime sponsors of the effort to restrict that power, which comes from Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Their legislation would require congressional authorization.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, DPa., opposes their approach.
“I believe we should work with our allies to address China’s excess steel production and unfair trade policies, but this proposal will roll back actions that protect Pennsylvania jobs, as well as ensure our nation has sufficient domestic supply to meet our military and critical infrastructure needs,” Mr. Casey said.
A coalition of business and agriculture organizations brought together by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pressuring other senators to support the Toomey-Corker effort, saying the president’s steel and aluminum tariffs are harming downstream industries and undermining U.S. allies’ efforts to combat unfair trade.
The American Institute for International Steel is preparing to fight the tariffs on another front — in court. The trade group is expected to announce a legal challenge Wednesday. Its members say the tariffs have drastically increased costs for manufacturers, whether they use domestic or imported steel.
The White House referred questions to the Office of U.S. Trade Representative, which did not immediately respond.
The president’s response is more likely to come in a middle-of-the-night tweet, say political scientists, referring to Mr. Trump’s habit of lashing out on social media, particularly when his policies are criticized from within his own party.
“Trump is going to hit back,” said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. “He may not personally attack Toomey but he is obviously going to go after that position.”
That could be why Mr. Toomey tempered his disagreement with praise for the president’s broader economic policies that he credited for improvements in employment rates, tax reform, regulatory relief, job growth and higher wages.
“None of us want to see all that disrupted with a trade war,” he told Bloomberg.
Chris Borick, pollster and political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., is surprised by Mr. Toomey’s public outrage over the issue but not his position.
“His very open challenge is not a style he often embraces,” Mr. Borick said. “We’ve seen him in many ways hedge and try to find some safe space on controversial issues, but this is one area where he feels really passionate … and he just doesn’t see a lot of alignment with the White House on this issue.”