U. S. allies breathed sighs of relief Thursday after the Trump administration issued a temporary reprieve on tariffs on steel and aluminum.
U. S. allies breathed sighs of relief Thursday after the Trump administration issued a temporary reprieve on tariffs on steel and aluminum, hours before they were set to begin.
The decision to exclude some of the United States’ closest trading partners from the import tariffs gave some space to the U. S. allies as they sought to negotiate permanent exemptions. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the European Union and South Korea are on the list U. S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer announced at a Senate hearing. Canada and Mexico already had been exempted.
But the wide scope of the exemptions – which now encompass more than half of the steel imported by the United States – raised questions about whether the tariffs would actually make a difference in supporting U. S. metal industries. The countries hit hardest by the steel tariffs when they take effect Friday will be Russia, Turkey and Japan.
Some European leaders hailed the decision to exempt them.
“Only reasonable that EU seems to be omitted from tariffs based on national security grounds given that EU and US are close allies,” wrote Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen on Twitter. “Rather than threatening to raise tariffs against one another EU and US should work together to solve the real problem of overcapacity.”
The leaders of the 28-nation European Union had gathered in Brussels, the EU capital, for a previously-scheduled summit that was taken over by fears of a trade war with the United States. They were already locked behind closed doors when word reached them that Lighthizer gave them temporary clemency during a Senate hearing. The European Union negotiates international trade relationships as a single bloc.
Primed for economic combat, President Donald Trump set in motion tariffs on as much as $60 billion in Chinese imports to the U. S. on Thursday and accused the Chinese of high-tech thievery, picking a fight that could push the global heavyweights into a trade war. China threatened retaliation, and…
The decision eased discussions that were set to stretch late into the Brussels night. World leaders had subjected Washington to a furious lobbying effort to remove the tariffs, announced by President Trump earlier this month, warning of a trade war and saying that they did not see why long-standing military allies should face the import taxes on national security grounds, the professed basis for Trump’s action.
