Trump seems to think his steel and aluminum tariffs are going to harm China. The problem is that they will do even more harm to our neighbor to the north, and our closest ally, Canada. Does Trump realize that Canadian diplomats smuggled some of our diplomats out of Iran after the seizure of our embassy in Tehran by providing them with false identification as Canadians — and that they did so at considerable risk to themselves? Does he realize that after we closed our airspace to incoming international flights on 9/11, many of those flights were diverted to Canada, where Americans were welcomed into the homes of countless Canadians? Does he realize that Canadians have fought alongside Americans in both World Wars, in Korea, in the first Iraq war, in Afghanistan, and against ISIS? Does he not know any of this, or does he just not care?
There have been reports that Trump decided to impose his 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports in order to punish China. The only problem is that our biggest supplier of imported steel is Canada, and its by an even greater margin our biggest supplier of imported aluminum. In fact, the Canadian aluminum smelting industry developed in significant part to supply U.S. defense manufacturers with critically needed aluminum during World War II. It has thrived, especially in Quebec, because aluminum smelting requires large quantities of electricity, and there is plenty of cheap hydroelectric power in Quebec.
The irony is that the statutory basis for Trump’s imposition of these tariffs is that they are necessary to preserve the strategic interests of the United States. Canada is no strategic threat to the United States. It’s not only a member of NATO, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a joint operation of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, with an American commander and a Canadian deputy commander. Our second and third biggest suppliers of imported steel are Brazil and South Korea, one of which is an important ally, and the other of which certainly isn’t any kind of an enemy. Our second biggest supplier of imported aluminum is Russia, which is indeed a strategic adversary, but not one that Trump has ever given any indication that he wants to take any action against.
One non-strategic reason frequently given for imposing tariffs is to protect American manufacturers from unfair competition by foreign companies that pay third world wages or have an unfair advantage because of weak environmental or workplace safety regulations. Obviously, those justifications don’t apply to Canada. In fact, unionized workers in the steel and aluminum industries in the U.S. and Canada are both represented by the same union — the United Steelworkers. And many companies operate in both countries.
Besides punishing our closest ally, and risking the start of a trade war, these tariffs will produce adverse effects on many Americans. It will increase the cost of goods containing significant amounts of steel or aluminum relatively more expensive to produce in the United States than in other countries. That will give Americans more incentive to purchase foreign-manufactured cars and other goods, and will also reduce the competitiveness of American-manufactured cars, airplanes, and other goods in the export market.
So why did Trump undertake this policy? Apparently because he was angry, and felt like striking out at somebody. According to reporting by NBC News, Trump’s policy was “announced without any internal review by government lawyers or his own staff, according to a review of an internal White House document.”
On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.
A trifecta of events had set him off in a way that two officials said they had not seen before: Hope Hicks'testimony to lawmakers investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, conduct by his embattled attorney general and the treatment of his son-in-law by his chief of staff.
Trump, the two officials said, was angry and gunning for a fight, and he chose a trade war, spurred on by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the White House director for trade — and against longstanding advice from his economic chair Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
This policy clearly has important implications for our closest strategic allies, so surely the Defense and State Departments were given advance notice and a chance to weigh in, right? Probably in any previous Presidency in American history they would have been, but not in this one:
No one at the State Department, the Treasury Department or the Defense Department had been told that a new policy was about to be announced or given an opportunity to weigh in in advance.
Think of that for a moment. The President of the United States announces a new policy that will have serious economic consequences for some of our most important allies and could damage our relations with them, and the Departments of State and Defense are left out of the loop, having to learn of this news just like the rest of us — from the press. And he does it in a fit of pique, because he is angry about other things and just wants the opportunity to lash out at somebody. I guess we can at least be thankful (for now) that he only started a trade war, not a nuclear one.