By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--March 12, 2018
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Brazil, which after Canada is the biggest steel supplier to the U.S. market, said it wanted to join the exemption list and Argentina made a similar case. Japan, the United States’ top economic and military ally in Asia, was next in line. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that Japan’s steel and aluminum shipments posed no threat to U.S. national security. With Japan a major trade partner and international investor, Suga said that, on the contrary, they contributed greatly to employment and industry in the United States. Japan’s steel industry body also expressed concern..
The European Union, the world’s biggest trade bloc, chimed in. “Europe is certainly not a threat to American internal security so we expect to be excluded,” European trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in Brussels. Malmstrom told reporters the EU was ready to complain to the World Trade Organization, and retaliate within 90 days. She will meet U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Japanese Trade Minister Hiroshige Seko in Brussels on Saturday when she will ask whether the EU is to be included in the tariffs. She won support from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Shares in European steelmakers fell, although Germany’s two biggest producers Thyssenkrupp (TKAG.DE) and Salzgitter (SZGG.DE) have insisted the impact on them will be limited.So Trump is almost certainly going to win some trade concessions from the countries who want in on the exemptions, and he's going to consider that a policy win that justifies this entire tariff decision. The problem remains, however, with the president's understanding of what an economic benefit is. He insists on seeing trade as a zero-sum game in which exports are good and imports are bad. He sees a "trade deficit" (in which the value of what we're importing exceeds the value of what we're exporting) as virtually the same thing as a budget deficit. It's not.
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