Trump aide: No tariff exclusions for allies

Bloomberg

The Trump administration shows scant sign of watering down its plan to impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports with carve-outs for specific countries, despite opposition from US allies and Republican lawmakers.
The president’s trade advisers fanned out across television news shows to defend the move, saying it was necessary to ensure the survival of the domestic steel and aluminum industries and would be put into effect soon.
In spite of pleas from Canada, Great Britain and other US partners, shipments from US allies will not be excluded from the action, they said. Some exemptions though may be granted to specific products deemed necessary to US businesses.
“There’s a difference between exemptions and country exclusions,” Peter Navarro, director of the National Trade Council at the White House, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“There’ll be an exemption procedure for particular cases where
you need to have exemptions so
that business can move forward, but at this point in time, there’ll be no country exclusions.”
Navarro didn’t specify under what circumstances exemptions may be considered but they are likely to be confined to specific types of steel or aluminum products used by different industries, which may not be made at all in the US. “As soon as he starts exempting countries, he has to raise the tariff on everybody else,” Navarro said. “As soon as he exempts one country, his phone starts ringing with the heads of state of other countries.”
In that vein, the UK PM Theresa May spoke with Trump about the tariffs.
“The Prime Minister raised our deep concern at the President’s forthcoming announcement on steel and aluminum tariffs, noting that multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of global overcapacity in all parties’ interests,” according to a readout from her office.
Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said steel duty exemptions should be made for Nafta members Canada and Mexico. Brady spoke to reporters in Mexico City, where negotiators are in the seventh round of talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump is expected to sign a formal order for the tariffs in the coming week or the following week at the latest, after all legalities are finalised, Navarro said.
He defended Trump’s decision to set levies of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum, a move that rocked financial markets and which critics say threatens US jobs and ignites the possibility of a global trade war. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross continued to press on Trump’s behalf and to downplay the possible impact of the move on US consumer prices and jobs.