Trump Invokes Cold War National Security Law To Tariff Canadian Steel, Identifying NATO Ally As Sufficient Foreign Threat To Justify Bypassing Congress

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump on Thursday signed two proclamations imposing 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent tariffs on imported aluminum, invoking Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, a Cold War era statute that allows the president to bypass Congress on trade matters deemed essential to national security. The proclamations identified imports from Canada, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Republic of Korea, all of whom currently have troops deployed alongside U.S. forces, as the relevant foreign threat.

The ceremony in the White House Roosevelt Room featured the president flanked by steelworkers, who had been summoned that morning, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose prior career as a steel industry investor was described by administration officials as unrelated to his enthusiasm for the policy. Chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who had opposed the tariffs, resigned earlier in the week and was not in attendance.

"Trade wars are good, and easy to win," the president had written on Twitter six days earlier, a position economic advisers within the administration described as theoretically interesting. The Section 232 framework, invoked rarely in over half a century, permits the executive branch to impose tariffs without congressional authorization upon a finding that the imports threaten national security. The Commerce Department staff completed that finding in approximately four months.

The tariffs apply to imports from the United States' four largest steel suppliers, three of which (Canada, South Korea, Brazil) are formal U.S. allies and the fourth of which (Mexico) is a treaty partner under NAFTA. Canada, identified in the proclamation as posing the security concern in question, supplies the United States with steel used primarily in pipelines that carry oil from Canada to the United States. Industry analysts noted that downstream American manufacturers, including automakers, can-makers, and construction firms, will face higher input costs estimated to eliminate roughly five domestic jobs for every one job created in the steel sector itself.

Asked whether the tariffs might invite retaliation against American agricultural exports, an administration spokesman said the president was confident that any farmers harmed by foreign countermeasures could be made whole through emergency taxpayer-funded relief programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, which is currently being run by a former agribusiness lobbyist.

At press time, the European Union had announced plans to impose retaliatory tariffs on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Kentucky bourbon, and Levi's blue jeans, products selected with a geographic precision suggesting Brussels had recently obtained a map of Mitch McConnell's home state.

Who Benefits

§Donald Trump personally, who collected the political rally rhetoric of standing tough on trade and a televised signing flanked by steelworkers.
§Trump Organization, whose ongoing concrete and construction projects sourced steel under exemption applications now handled by a small Commerce Department office where the family's lawyers regularly appear.
§U.S. domestic steel producers, including Nucor, U.S. Steel, and Cleveland-Cliffs, whose share prices jumped on the announcement and whose pricing power increased immediately.
§Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose career as a steel-industry investor preceded his stewardship of the policy now raising steel prices.
§Trade lawyers and tariff-exemption consultants, who now process tens of thousands of company applications for relief from a tariff their clients did not previously need relief from.
§China, which receives relatively less of the administration's tariff attention while the United States feuds with its own allies.
§Russia and other strategic adversaries, which benefit from any visible fracture in NATO cohesion and transatlantic economic alignment.
§Future presidents, who now possess a working precedent for declaring an ally to be a national security threat in order to bypass Congress on economic policy.
§USDA and agribusiness lobby, positioned to administer the multi-billion dollar farmer bailout programs that retaliatory tariffs will eventually make necessary.
§Authoritarian governments globally, who can now cite an American example of using a national security pretext to evade legislative process on trade.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment