Thread: Trump's tariff announcement dominates NAFTA talks

Trump's tariff announcement dominates NAFTA talks

18 Mins Ago | 02:18
March 5, 2018

President Donald Trump signaled on Monday that his hastily announced tariffs on steel and aluminum may not be implemented, at least for Canada and Mexico, if a "fair" NAFTA agreement is negotiated.

"Tariffs on steel and aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed," the president tweeted.

U.S., Canadian and Mexican representatives meet Monday for the final round of NAFTA talks, which have been complicated by Trump's tariff announcement on Thursday. The president announced a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum, roiling financial markets and causing sharp rebukes from Canada, the European Union and others, including many U.S. companies.

Despite the blowback, Trump in the subsequent days maintained his tough stance, even going so far as to say that "trade wars are good and easy to win."

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 420 points on Thursday following the announcement, led lower by manufacturers like Boeing and General Motors. But steel stocks soared.

Trump surprised aides Thursday with the sudden tariff announcement made during a meeting with steel and aluminum executives and with no accompanying paperwork. Initially that morning, the White House delayed an announcement, and it appeared Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn had persuaded the president to scrap the tariffs, or at least wait until more analysis was done.

But during a meeting with Cohn and other advisors that day, Trump was adamant about wanting tariffs, overruling Cohn in favor of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and trade advisor Peter Navarro, who wanted the measures. The president then announced the tariffs with cameras rolling after the media was invited in to cover the conclusion of the meeting with metals executives.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/05/trum...is-signed.html

The tariffs would still remain, unless they are reduced in exchange for quotas or something else in that arena that benefits not only the steel and aluminum industries in our country but other industries in the USA as well, and only for Canada and Mexico, not the rest of the world.

Trump To Canada, Mexico: Sign A “Fair NAFTA” And I’ll Waive Tariffs

ED MORRISSEYPosted at 10:01 am on March 5, 2018



Was the announcement of steel and aluminum tariffs a ploy to pressure Canada and Mexico into greater concessions in the NAFTA renegotiations? Many assumed that Donald Trump meant to take aim at China with his trade action, although China exports a relatively small amount of either metal to the US, and that our NAFTA partners were collateral damage. Two tweets this morning suggest that Trump took deliberate aim at the two North American partners as leverage to score a political win on a trade agreement that has been deeply unpopular with Trump’s base:

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump


We have large trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. NAFTA, which is under renegotiation right now, has been a bad deal for U.S.A. Massive relocation of companies & jobs. Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed. Also, Canada must..
6:47 AM - Mar 5, 2018

• 
  

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump

...treat our farmers much better. Highly restrictive. Mexico must do much more on stopping drugs from pouring into the U.S. They have not done what needs to be done. Millions of people addicted and dying.
6:53 AM - Mar 5, 2018

• 
  

Was this Trump’s strategy all along, or is it an on-the-fly adaptation necessitated by criticism from his own allies in the GOP? Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports on the tick-tock of the decision to impose the tariffs, which turns out to be neither as arbitrary nor whimsical as some imagined. Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross have been laying the groundwork for months, and Trump has been champing at the bit to fulfill his campaign promise. However, Trump may have still jumped the gun a bit last week:

They [Gary Cohn and Rob Porter] thought they’d got Trump to agree to a sequence: first impose tariffs on solar panels and washing machines (already done); then impose tariffs on hundreds of Chinese products to punish China for stealing American intellectual property (this action was imminent); then only impose the steel and aluminum tariffs after that (though in their minds hopefully Trump would be satisfied after whacking China so hard and wouldn’t feel the need to go further.) Lastly, they were considering an investigation into unfair foreign treatment of American car companies.

In the interim, the Porter disaster happened, and Trump became more and more agitated with the direction of the White House. The day Hope Hicks announced her departure, he was hopping mad, raging at Jeff Sessions and furious about the avalanche of negative stories about Jared Kushner. Trump was angry, agitated, and fed up. So he cut “the globalists” out of the picture, told Ross and Navarro to bring him the tariffs he’d been demanding for months, and made the announcement.

The process was so rushed that the tariffs don’t actually exist yet — the details haven’t been ironed out or legally vetted. The interagency process effectively died with Porter’s departure — though several senior White House officials have told me they think Porter and Cohn were being too clever by half and were never going to succeed at staving off the president’s wishes for hardline tariffs on steel and aluminum. The president promised his people tariffs and he demanded them from his staff for months.

So it’s clear that Trump and everyone else understood that the steel and aluminum tariffs wouldn’t damage China, at least not primarily. Trump had been trying to force Canada and Mexico into significant concessions in NAFTA talks all during this process, with little success. At times, Trump threatened to tear up NAFTA altogether rather than default back into the original treaty. It now seems that this tariff announcement might be a way to deliver the first shot across the bow and incentivize enough concessions for Trump to declare a victory.

That makes House Ways and Means chair Kevin Brady (R-TX) perhaps a little naive:

“There will be an exemption procedure for particular cases where we need to have exemptions, so that business can move forward,” Navarro said on CNN’s“State of the Union” program.

Asked whether the United States’ two North American Free Trade Agreement allies should be exempted, Brady told reporters in Mexico City:“Yes, and going further, excluding all fairly traded steel and aluminum, not just from these two countries.”

“I think we can make a very strong case for other countries as well,” said the Republican lawmaker, adding he hoped Trump could be persuaded to step back.“We’re going to continue to make the case to the White House,” added Brady, who met with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland at the Canadian embassy later in the afternoon.

Good luck with those White House talks if Trump wants to use this as leverage in NAFTA talks. But there may be a country that could see an exception, especially since Australia claims Trump promised them one:

Donald Trump “emphatically” promised to exempt Australian steel and aluminium from US tariffs during a meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last year, it can be revealed. …
This revelation explains why the Australian Government has been stunned by Mr Trump’s declaration last week that the tariff regime will be enforced, and subsequent statements by Mr Ross that country-specific exemptions are unlikely.

The conversation between the President and the Prime Minister was in the so-called “Steel Cage”, a secure communications pod that travels with the US President.

Sources have told the ABC Mr Trump’s promise was emphatic and that he instructed Mr Ross to work out the specifics to “make it happen”.

If we see an exception for Australia and not for Canada or Mexico, that will tend to corroborate the theory that this was intended for our NAFTA partners all along. But will Trump stick to it if Canada and Mexico balk at concessions in NAFTA talks? Swan wonders about that too, especially given the lack of legal preparation before last week’s announcement. Trump will have plenty of time to rethink this, or at least to pose as rethinking it, before it becomes reality.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/...tm_campaign=nl

The time for playing games is over. Just end NAFTA and let's move on from there!

Originally Posted by Judy

The tariffs would still remain, unless they are reduced in exchange for quotas or something else in that arena that benefits not only the steel and aluminum industries in our country but other industries in the USA as well, and only for Canada and Mexico, not the rest of the world.

Screw that, I want the tariffs to apply to ALL countries. We buy most of our imported steel from Canada. They are the biggest reason our steel industry went to hell. Nope, I want the tariffs to apply to every country across the board.

The global steel industry by the numbers
by Alanna Petroff @AlannaPetroff March 2, 2018: 1:00 PM ET
Do we really know tariffs are coming?
President Trump has announced a 25% tariff on imported steel, sending shock waves through markets.

The move could spark a trade war with major implications for steelmakers and the economy.

Here's a look at the numbers behind the global steel industry:

1.7 billion metric tonnes

When it comes to steel production, one country is miles ahead of the pack: China.

It accounted for a whopping 49% of the 1.7 billion metric tonnes of steel produced globally last year, according to industry group Worldsteel.

The European Union, Japan, India and the United States round out the top five producers.
steel production countries china

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Steelmakers have in the past accused China of dumping steel on other markets, pushing down prices, forcing rivals out of business and killing thousands of jobs.

The US and EU had sought to level the playing field with targeted tariffs.

50%

What's all that steel used for?

Half of global steel production goes into buildings and infrastructure, which includes products such as beams and pipelines.

Some 16% of steel is used in mechanical equipment. Cars, shipping and rail transport also receive hefty allotments.
steel industries building infrastructure

When it comes to consumption by country, China once again tops the rankings.

It's followed by the EU, the US, India, Japan and South Korea, according to Worldsteel.

$29 billion

The US is the world's top steel importer. The value of steel shipped into the US was just over $29 billion in 2017.

Nearly 17% of steel imported into the US comes from Canada, according to S&P Global Platts. South Korea, Mexico, Brazil and China are also major exporters to the US.

The new tariff could put those countries squarely in the firing line.

Ben May, a director at Oxford Economics, said that 88% of Canadian steel exports went to the US in 2016. The same is true for nearly three-quarters of Mexican steel.

China would be less affected because its trade with the US is already restricted by American import controls and duties.
US steel tariffs chart

The volume of US steel imports is not very consistent. In 2014 they were worth nearly $38 billion, but that figure declined to just over $22 billion in 2016.
us steel imports

2%

Steel and aluminum, which Trump has also targeted, account for about 2% of world trade, according to Capital Economics.

That may not seem like much. But other countries may respond with trade actions of their own.

"The direct impact on the global economy of the tariffs President Trump announced yesterday would be minimal. But the fact that they are being justified under a flimsy pretext of national security increases the risks of retaliation," said Andrew Kenningham, chief global economist at Capital Economics.

-- CNN's Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/02/news...ada/index.html

TERMINATE NAFTA TN-1 VISAS!!!