Trump demands aides pump up anti-China tariffs

His comments came amid rising global trade tensions in the wake of a United States decision to impose steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminium.

While complaints about China’s abuse of intellectual property rights are not confined to the United States, Trump’s global steel and aluminum tariffs announced last week under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 complicate USA efforts to recruit allies to put pressure on China. While no further bilateral meetings are planned at the moment, contacts are ongoing as the European Union is racing against time to secure an exemption before the aluminum and steel tariffs are enacted in less than two weeks. The EU’s trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom commented last Friday that the EU should be excluded from tariffs.

The EU said those efforts will continue this week, though no details for further talks have yet been announced.

Indeed, noting how Trump has linked the duties to what he regards as a successful outcome in the Nafta talks, Dr Peter Warrian, senior research fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and a senior expert on the steel trade, warned Metal Bulletin: “This has the potential to become doubly bad. We believe that protectionism is a dead end”, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters. If they drop their horrific barriers & tariffs on USA products going in, we will likewise drop ours.

“He only explained the schedule and the procedures”, he said.

“We’re deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks”, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the time. “We will look at the impact onJapanese businesses and make a final decision”.

Michael Dolega, economist at TD Economics estimates that about 5,000 to 10,000 jobs could be added to steel and aluminum production in the USA, but there could also be a loss of 25,000 to 50,000 jobs in metal-intensive sectors like machinery and transport equipment.

Conventional free-trade wisdom has little to do with reality. In a nutshell, you may save a few jobs in the USA steel, aluminum, and even the dishwasher industry, but you will lose jobs elsewhere that will by far surpass any job gains.

The EU reacted angrily to Trump’s announcement with the European Commission announcing last Wednesday that it would raise import duties on archetypal USA goods including bourbon, peanuts and cranberries if the US went ahead.

Moreover, both Alcoa (aluminum) and Stelco (steel) are major players in these two industrial sectors – and they are owned by US commercial interests.

The visit had been planned for weeks as a follow-up discussion on over capacity, seen by observers as a swipe at China.

The market’s reaction to Tillerson was muted, certainly not as dramatic as the drop that immediately followed the resignation of National Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, who failed to get Trump to reconsider the tariffs.

For Merkel, that’s a sign of German manufacturing excellence; she says trade needn’t be a zero sum game. But we still have to watch the responses from the nations that are subject to the new action.

The aluminum tariff could also disrupt the Canada-U.S. Defense Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA), which covers trade in military-related equipment and armaments.

It has already started monitoring incoming metal flows to see whether a surge occurs. Qualcomm shares tanked, and analysts raised concerns that other attempts by foreign companies to buy US technology companies could meet the same fate.

Trump is targeting Chinese high technology companies to punish China for its investment policies that effectively force USA companies to give up their technology secrets in exchange for being allowed to operate in the country, as well as for other IP practices Washington considers unfair.