Trump faces pushback on tariffs but says he will not back down

By Susan Cornwell and Ayesha Rascoe

 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump announces that the United States will impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum during a meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump faced growing pressure on Monday from political and diplomatic allies as well as U.S. companies urging him to pull back from proposed steel and aluminium tariffs, although he said he would stick to his guns.

 

Inside the White House, there still appeared to be confusion about the timing and extent of the planned tariffs, which would hit allies like Canada and Mexico hard.

 

Efforts by Trump and U.S. trade negotiators to link the NAFTA trade pact talks to the duties received short shrift from Ottawa and Mexico City.

 

Leading Republicans turned up the pressure on Trump, with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan leading the charge. Ryan's home state of Wisconsin would be hit by proposed European counter-measures on Harley Davidson <HOG.N> motorbikes.

 

Representative Kevin Brady, another top House Republican, called on Trump not to hit America's closest allies.

 

The planned tariffs have roiled world stock markets as investors worried about the prospect of an escalating trade war that would derail global economic growth. Stocks across the globe rose on Monday, however, after four days in decline as investors saw the tariff threats as a U.S. negotiating tactic and not a done deal and as pressure grew on Trump to back off.

 

"We're not backing down," Trump said during a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "I don't think you're going to have a trade war," he added, without elaborating.

 

Earlier comments from Trump had stoked talk of a global trade war as he described them as easy to win and issued a threat to German carmakers. One of those, BMW <BMWG.DE>, runs a plant in the United States that is the largest single autos exporter in the country and has created thousands of jobs.

 

Most responses to Trump's proposed tariffs have been targeted. The European Union said it would hit Harleys, bourbon and jeans, iconic American products. It did not threaten to ramp up the issue.

 

China has been largely mum, urging caution, and both Canada and Mexico have stressed the targeted nature of any response.

 

STRESSES INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE?

 

Trump was expected to finalise the planned tariffs later in the week, although some observers familiar with the process said it could occur next week. The initial announcement by Trump last week came as a surprise.

 

The United States, Mexico and Canada have been holding talks over changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact that Trump has threatened to abandon.

 

Six months of tense talks have produced little in the way of progress and a move by Washington to link the steel and aluminium tariffs to progress on NAFTA was rebuffed by Canada and Mexico.

 

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also attempted to drive a wedge between Canada and Mexico when he suggested the United States would be willing to hold bilateral, rather than trilateral talks. The two countries again stood firm.

 

In Washington, aides scrambled to meet Trump’s demand for the paperwork to be completed for a formal announcement. The exact timing was unclear as the tariff documentation had to be drafted and go through a variety of reviews, a process that takes days, an administration official said.

 

There was always a chance that Trump ”could amend his initial announcement” to take account of the concerns expressed about it, said a source familiar with the internal debate at the White House.

 

TRUMP'S TRADE TRAIL

 

Trump has frequently talked tough on trade, although his actions have not always matched his words. On his first day in office in January 2017, he withdrew from the 14-nation Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, a deal that was dead on arrival in the U.S. Congress in any case.

 

He has frequently tweeted and said that he would pull out of NAFTA, which he has called a jobs killer. But a year after taking office, the 1994 deal remains intact.

 

Trump has approved a series of small-scale trade actions, of which the steel and aluminium duties would be a part. Taken together with actions on washing machines and solar panels, the proposed move accounts for just 4.1 percent of U.S. imports. In terms of global trade, they are just 0.6 percent, investment bank Morgan Stanley said in a report.

 

The head of the World Trade Organization warned of a real risk of triggering an escalation of global trade barriers and a deep recession, even as financial markets and many economists started to discount the risk of a global crisis.

 

"We must make every effort to avoid the fall of the first dominoes. There is still time," WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo told the heads of WTO delegations at a closed-door meeting in Geneva.

 

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Steve Holland, Eric Walsh and Susan Heavey in Washington, Adriana Barrera, Sharay Angulo, Lesley Wroughton and David Ljunggren in Mexico City, Rodrigo Campos in New York and Tom Miles in Geneva; Writing by Frances Kerry and David Chance; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-03-06

6 minutes ago, webfact said:

U.S. President Donald Trump faced growing pressure on Monday from political and diplomatic allies as well as U.S. companies urging him to pull back from proposed steel and aluminium tariffs, although he said he would stick to his guns.

"Stick to his guns"?

 

By all accounts, there are no real "guns' to stick to. It seems that he was pissed about something and decided to go stir things up for no other reason that he could; this is no way to make policy or run a country. The only thing worse than doing stupid, impulsive things as President is to be too stupid not to realize the danger of one's actions and pull back.

 

Is the whole world going to suffer a bit because the Donald had a temper tantrum?

 

Jesus wept.

 

His latest tweets indicate that this is all part of his "strategy" for renegotiating NAFTA.

 

He seems to be ping-ponging on his "rationale". Shocker.

*Deleted post edited out*

 

...the heads of the National Tooling and Machining Association and the Precision Metalforming Association were among many steel users that warned of the damage that could be done by the import duties. They said in a joint statement: “President Trump campaigned on the promise to protect manufacturing jobs but . . . his plan to impose tariffs will cost manufacturing jobs across the country.”

 

They added that 6.5m people were employed in the US in businesses that use steel and aluminium, compared to just 80,000 working in the steel industry.

 

Dennis Slater, president of the Association of Equipment Managers, highlighted the threat to US exports. “Tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminium imports will burden US manufacturers with higher costs while our competitors in China, India and Mexico will get a free pass to use the cheapest input materials they can find,” he said.

 

A study for consuming industries estimated that steel duties imposed by President George W Bush in 2002 cost roughly 200,000 jobs in the US.

 

The energy industry, another heavy user of steel, also raised concerns. Andy Black, president of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, said: “We are urging the administration to avoid killing US jobs through a steel tariff that impacts pipelines.” He added that tariffs that raised the cost of a pipeline by 25 per cent “would delay or cancel pipeline projects and end up hurting American workers denied construction and contracting jobs.”

 

MillerCoors, the brewing company owned by the Molson Coors group, tweeted that the aluminium tariff was “likely to lead to job losses across the beer industry”. It added: “American workers and American consumers will suffer as a result of this misguided tariff.”

 

Analysts suggested the car industry could also suffer from higher steel costs.

Michael Underhill, chief investment officer at Capital Innovations, said: “Auto sales have flattened in recent months . . . Cars and trucks will become more expensive at a time when many are thinking they should make them more affordable.”

 

By the close in New York, Ford’s shares were down 3 per cent and General Motors’ were down 4 per cent...

 

Thom Dammrich, President of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, said the proposed aluminium tariffs could end up “destroying our members’ ability to build boats in the US”. 

 

He added: “As a result, the jobs of the American workers who build these boats, their engines and components, are now in jeopardy.”

The Chinese and the Russians are laughing hard. Maybe they yearned for a secret bug in the Oval Office, but not even in their wildest espionage dreams could the have imagined a payoff as big as this. 

 

In trump, the Chinese and the Russians have an American president with a Hugo Chavez like understanding of economics pissing off his allies by starting trade wars (who will be hardest hit by this). All the while not one net job will come of this for the average American worker. 

 

Tariffs? Gawd. The lunar right in the US love to run around yelling ‘socialism’ anytime someone whispers the words ‘universal health care’. But they have no problem with this Buffon letting the blunt hand of government distort trade and enterprise. 

 

 

 

Republicans thought they could control this man child, didn't matter what he did as long as delivered some of their pet projects. Dance with the devil and get burned.

38 minutes ago, mikebike said:

...the heads of the National Tooling and Machining Association and the Precision Metalforming Association were among many steel users that warned of the damage that could be done by the import duties. They said in a joint statement: “President Trump campaigned on the promise to protect manufacturing jobs but . . . his plan to impose tariffs will cost manufacturing jobs across the country.”

 

They added that 6.5m people were employed in the US in businesses that use steel and aluminium, compared to just 80,000 working in the steel industry.

 

Dennis Slater, president of the Association of Equipment Managers, highlighted the threat to US exports. “Tariffs or quotas on steel and aluminium imports will burden US manufacturers with higher costs while our competitors in China, India and Mexico will get a free pass to use the cheapest input materials they can find,” he said.

 

A study for consuming industries estimated that steel duties imposed by President George W Bush in 2002 cost roughly 200,000 jobs in the US.

 

The energy industry, another heavy user of steel, also raised concerns. Andy Black, president of the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, said: “We are urging the administration to avoid killing US jobs through a steel tariff that impacts pipelines.” He added that tariffs that raised the cost of a pipeline by 25 per cent “would delay or cancel pipeline projects and end up hurting American workers denied construction and contracting jobs.”

 

MillerCoors, the brewing company owned by the Molson Coors group, tweeted that the aluminium tariff was “likely to lead to job losses across the beer industry”. It added: “American workers and American consumers will suffer as a result of this misguided tariff.”

 

Analysts suggested the car industry could also suffer from higher steel costs.

Michael Underhill, chief investment officer at Capital Innovations, said: “Auto sales have flattened in recent months . . . Cars and trucks will become more expensive at a time when many are thinking they should make them more affordable.”

 

By the close in New York, Ford’s shares were down 3 per cent and General Motors’ were down 4 per cent...

 

Thom Dammrich, President of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, said the proposed aluminium tariffs could end up “destroying our members’ ability to build boats in the US”. 

 

He added: “As a result, the jobs of the American workers who build these boats, their engines and components, are now in jeopardy.”

Now you're bringing cold hard facts into the discussion. You should know by now that this doesn't interest the man-child supporters at all.

MAWA!

Troll post and replies removed.

 

Trump is like a stupid old fat man pushing a large ball of clay up a hill.  

2 hours ago, boomerangutang said:

Trump is like a stupid old fat man pushing a large ball of clay up a hill.  

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sisyphus

 

noun, Classical Mythology.

1.

a son of Aeolus and ruler of Corinth, noted for his trickery: he was punished in Tartarus by being compelled to roll a stone to the top of a slope, the stone always escaping him near the top and rolling down again.

 

 

This is all to complicated for Trump to understand.  As always he is totally out of his depth. 

Trump tariffs: Canada and Mexico may be exempt from plan, White House says

Donald Trump could exempt Canada, Mexico and other countries from stiff import taxes he is expected to impose this week, the White House said on Wednesday.

The US president and his allies previously indicated that there would be no exceptions to the trade tariffs, which have been condemned by the European Union (EU) and led to the resignation of the president’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn.

“We expect the president will sign something by the end of the week and there are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well, based on that process,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told reporters on Wednesday.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/07/donald-trump-gary-cohn-trade-tariffs-resignation

The tariffs will hurt America and that's fine with Putin, so it should be fine with Trump.