Senate Republicans are under intense White House pressure to quash a bipartisan attempt to curtail President Donald Trump’s authority to impose tariffs on national security grounds, as he did last week when he slapped duties on steel and aluminum imports from some of the U.S.’s closest allies.
Trump summoned 13 GOP senators to the Oval Office for a late-afternoon meeting Wednesday that lasted two hours, seeking allies in an effort to push back against proposed legislation that would require the president to get congressional approval for such tariffs. The president made a personal appeal to the lawmakers block the proposal from going forward, according to two people present at the meeting.
That may be enough to stop the effort...
The effort underscores the growing unease among free-trade lawmakers in both parties as the president continues to take punitive steps against trade partners he says are giving America a raw deal, including Canada, Mexico and the European Union...
...the legislation is picking up support from one of the Republican Party’s chief constituencies, the business community. The National Retail Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said they back the congressional review proposal.
Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, said the business community is “profoundly concerned” that the new tariffs will spark retaliatory measures in coming weeks that will cost American jobs.
“The constitutional authority of the Congress to ‘regulate foreign trade’ and its oversight of tariff policy is unambiguous,” Bradley said in a statement. “This modest proposal to clarify congressional prerogatives is welcome and long overdue.”
Several lawmakers have said justifying tariffs on national security grounds was hurting U.S. credibility and inviting retaliation that would hurt an otherwise solid economy. Mexico, for instance, is imposing a 20% tariff on U.S. agricultural products including apples and 25% duties on Tennessee whiskey in response to Trump’s trade policies.
This is excerpted from 7 June 2018 edition of Industry Week.