‘Trump reviewing tariffs on Canada steel, Aluminum’

Bloomberg

The US, Canada and Mexico remain at odds over metals tariffs, with Donald Trump’s envoy to Canada saying the president is reviewing them.
Trump’s ambassador, Kelly Craft, argued the levies on steel and aluminum imports were designed to prevent overseas metal from entering America via its neighbors.
“That is not something that is against Canada,” Craft said at an event near Niagara Falls with Canada’s ambassador
to the US, David MacNaughton. “It’s just protecting North America from other countries that will be passing raw materials through, and also to protect our steel industry at home.”
Her remarks come as Mexico signals there is a renewed push underway to resolve the metals tariff issue before a tentative deal to replace North America’s free trade agreement is signed at the end next month.
“We need to solve that issue before the signing takes place,” Mexico’s deputy economy minister for trade, Juan Carlos Baker, said separately in Ottawa. “Certainly we expect the 232 issue to be taken care of before the signing,” he added, referring to the section of US trade law used to apply the tariffs.

‘AGREE TO DISAGREE’
Craft and her Canadian counterpart struck a collaborative tone at the panel discussion, hosted by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. “The president is reviewing the steel and aluminum tariffs,” Craft said, adding she and MacNaughton “actually had a nice little frank discussion” during a recent late night phone call, “which is nice that we can agree to disagree.”
MacNaughton expressed optimism the tariff issue will be resolved “sooner rather than later,” partly because he believes they were applied to give the US leverage in trade talks. Now that the US, Canada and Mexico have reached a tentative agreement, “there is no need for those tariffs to be in place,” he said.
Canada has taken steps to squeeze the inflow of foreign metals. On steel, it cracked down on so-called transshipment in March and imposed safeguard quotas and tariffs. It hasn’t yet imposed safeguard measures on aluminum, of which its exports account for 50 percent of total US consumption.
The US justified the tariffs in the first place by claiming the real concern was that trans-shipment — when a country circumvents trade restrictions in one country by shipping steel through another. A Chinese company two years ago was alleged to be shipping aluminum into the US through Mexico.