Trump Announces 'Steep Tariffs' On Aluminum And Steel, Will Begin Next Week
President Donald Trump announced his plans to impose steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum at a meeting Thursday.
The order that is currently being drafted implements a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent duty on aluminum, Fox Business reported.
Trump made the tariff announcement during a White House meeting with steel and aluminum industry executives.
“What’s been allowed to go on for decades is disgraceful,” he said, according to The Daily Caller. “And when it comes to a time when our country can’t make aluminum and steel, and somebody said it before and I will tell you, you almost don’t have much of a country. Because without steel and aluminum, your country is not the same. We need it. We need it even for defense, if you think, we need it for defense.”
“We need great steelmakers. Great aluminum makers for defense. So, we will probably see you sometime next week. We will be signing it in,” he continued. “You have protection for the first time in a long while and you are going to regrow your industries. That’s all I’m asking. You have to regrow your industries.”
Trump argued that previous administrations hadn’t shielded the industries from unfair trade practices.
It is still unclear whether or not the tariffs would make exceptions for certain trading partners, Politico reported.
This announcement comes a few weeks after the U.S. Commerce Department concluded that the volume of imports “threaten to impair” national security after an investigation into steel and aluminum imports.
The department recommended three different options to increase U.S. steel manufacturing capacity: a 24 percent tariff on steel imports from all countries, a 53 percent tariff on 12 countries including China, India and Brazil or “a quote on steel imports from all countries equal to 63 percent of each country’s exports to the U.S,” according to Fox Business.
The new tariffs could have unintended consequences for global trade, for example, it “has the potential to ignite a tit-for-tat trade confrontation with China, the European Union and other major players in world trade,” according to Politico.
Industries, like agriculture, also fear that their own trading partners could retaliate against the tariffs.
Steel stocks were trading higher after the news, while U.S. manufacturing giants were down “on fears that new tariffs will raise their costs and thus hurt their profits.”
As shown in Business Insider’s tweet, the Dow Jones Industrial average fell by over 1 percent after the announcement.
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