Trump’s Tariffs Keep Allies, Markets and Industry Guessing<br />Many of them had spent the previous two weeks frantically lobbying the administration for a permanent exemption, but the White House said late Thursday<br />that those nations would have until May 1 to negotiate “satisfactory alternative means” to address the national security threat that America faced from a reliance on foreign metals.<br />On Friday, Mr. Trump boasted that his approach would produce better trade deals for the United<br />States, including what he said was a breakthrough in negotiations with South Korea.<br />“While serious problems persist in the global steel market, President Trump’s steel<br />and aluminum tariffs were a blunt and misaimed response,” J. D. Foster, the chief economist for the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, wrote on Friday morning.<br />He later rattled free-trade Republicans when, on CNBC, he agreed<br />that the Chinese tariffs would produce “some ultimate retaliation, but I don’t think it’s going to be the end of the earth.”<br />Nervous Republicans on Capitol Hill say the administration’s frequently and hastily altered plans to impose the tariffs suggest<br />that Mr. Trump and his aides are devising trade policy on the fly.<br />And the White House raised the specter of another showdown, saying<br />that the tariffs would be lifted only until May 1, pending negotiations, and that it could impose quotas on metal imports from those countries at any point<br />That argument is what motivated Mr. Trump’s initial declaration last month<br />that he would impose what is effectively a tax of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum from every country in the world.
