Opinion: White House continues bad Trump tariffs
The Republicans used to be the party of free-traders in this country, recognizing that when it comes to manufacturing, nations ought to make what nations can make the best: most efficiently, with a quality and a price that makes consumers around the world prefer that commodity as compared with similar stuff made in another country.
Your country will make something else more efficiently, because of labor- and commodity-price differences, because of access to raw materials, because of education and technology. You will therefore prosper, and be able to sell to and buy from other countries. There were always exceptions, of course. The GOP-leaning management and ownership of a big Pennsylvania steel company was likely to applaud White House moves to put tariffs on South Korean or Chinese steel, shoring up their own business, at the same time as they would be in theory at least against the creation of trade wars.But the Republican Party turned quickly into the party of tariffs and trade wars during the presidential administration of Donald Trump.
Now the World Trade Organization is again rejecting the Trump-Biden foreign steel and aluminum tariffs in a ruling made last week, and the White House is continuing to defend the economically indefensible. It continues to back the taxes on American consumers — 25% on steel, 10% on aluminum — by claiming that importing them threatens national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.
In its ruling, the WTO said it was “not persuaded” that the U.S. implemented the tariffs “in time of war or other emergency in international relations” that would justify the tariffs on national security grounds, Fox Business News reports.
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