Trump’s Tariffs Keep Allies, Markets and Industry Guessing
Many of them had spent the previous two weeks frantically lobbying the administration for a permanent exemption, but the White House said late Thursday
that those nations would have until May 1 to negotiate “satisfactory alternative means” to address the national security threat that America faced from a reliance on foreign metals.
On Friday, Mr. Trump boasted that his approach would produce better trade deals for the United
States, including what he said was a breakthrough in negotiations with South Korea.
“While serious problems persist in the global steel market, President Trump’s steel
and aluminum tariffs were a blunt and misaimed response,” J. D. Foster, the chief economist for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote on Friday morning.
He later rattled free-trade Republicans when, on CNBC, he agreed
that the Chinese tariffs would produce “some ultimate retaliation, but I don’t think it’s going to be the end of the earth.”
Nervous Republicans on Capitol Hill say the administration’s frequently and hastily altered plans to impose the tariffs suggest
that Mr. Trump and his aides are devising trade policy on the fly.
And the White House raised the specter of another showdown, saying
that the tariffs would be lifted only until May 1, pending negotiations, and that it could impose quotas on metal imports from those countries at any point
That argument is what motivated Mr. Trump’s initial declaration last month
that he would impose what is effectively a tax of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum from every country in the world.