Trump set to authorize steel, aluminum tariffs on Thursday
March 8, 2018 by admin
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump plans to offer Canada and Mexico a 30-day exemption from planned tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, which could be extended based on progress in NAFTA talks, a White House official said on Wednesday night.The move, first reported by the Washington Post, followed comments earlier in the day by a White House spokeswoman that the impending tariffs could exclude Canada, Mexico and a clutch of other countries “based on national security.”
Trump was expected to sign a presidential proclamation to establish the tariffs during a ceremony on Thursday, but a White House official said later it could slide into Friday because documents had to be cleared through a legal process.
The president has faced mounting opposition to the tariffs from prominent congressional Republicans and business officials worried about their potential impact on the economy.
The tariffs would impose duties of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum to counter cheap imports, especially from China, that the president says undermine U.S. industry and jobs.
A senior U.S. official said the measures would take effect about two weeks after Trump signs the proclamation.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a regular media briefing on Wednesday: “We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week and there are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well based on that process.
“It will be country by country, and it will be based on national security,” she said.
Trump had said on Monday that Canada and Mexico would only be excluded after the successful renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Efforts by Trump and U.S. trade negotiators to link the NAFTA talks to the duties have received short shrift from Ottawa and Mexico City.
Action that does not include exemptions risks retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports – not least by Canada and Europe – and complicates already tough trade talks on NAFTA.
The benchmark Standard Poor’s 500 stock index ended slightly lower following a volatile session after Trump promised the tariffs but then said Mexico and Canada could be exempt.
The SP closed 0.05 percent lower after being down 0.4 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 0.33 percent. The U.S. dollar pared gains to end little changed, while the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso pared some losses.
Markets were rattled by Tuesday’s resignation announcement by Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, who was seen as a bulwark against Trump’s economic nationalism.
Cohn’s departure, after an internal White House battle over Trump’s plans to impose the tariffs, clears the way for greater influence by trade hardliners such as Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade policy adviser.
Sanders said Trump was considering several candidates to fill Cohn’s position, while Navarro said he was not short-listed for the job.
CHINA
In his first tweet on Wednesday, the Republican president showed no sign of backing away from the tariffs, saying the United States had lost more than 55,000 factories and 6 million manufacturing jobs and let its trade deficit soar since the 1989-1993 administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Later, his tweets turned to trade with China, demanding that Beijing lay out plans for reducing its trade surplus with the United States by $1 billion, which appeared to have been raised during a meeting with a top Chinese official last week.
“China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States,” Trump tweeted, without saying where the message had been conveyed.
China ran a record goods trade surplus with the United States last year of $375.2 billion
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On Wednesday, more than 100 House of Representative Republicans, including Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that oversees U.S. trade policy, wrote to Trump praising him for standing up to “bad actors,” but emphasized that fairly traded products should be excluded from the tariffs.
In a separate letter, Iowa’s congressional delegation, including two Republican senators, warned that the tariffs would hurt the state’s farmers and manufacturing.
The head of the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue, warned about the impact to the economy.
“We won’t drive the economy to over 3 percent growth or continue to create jobs if we go down this path,” said Donohue, the chamber’s president and chief executive. “We urge the administration to take this risk seriously.”
Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, David Shepardson, Susan Heavey, Makini Brice and Jason Lange in Washington, Tom Miles in Geneva and Phil Blenkinsop in Luxembourg; Writing by Robin Pomeroy and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney
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Florida House Passes Gun Control Bill, Defying NRA
March 8, 2018 by admin
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“This isn’t hard,” Mr. Moskowitz said. “Putting your kid in the ground is hard. This is easy.”
“This may be the most consequential vote we ever take on this floor,” said Representative Shawn Harrison, Republican of Tampa. “Grown-ups protect our kids. It’s what we do. It’s our turn. Don’t let them down.”
The legislation passed, with a vote of 67 to 50. Lawmakers rose, looked up into the public gallery and applauded Andrew Pollack, whose daughter, Meadow, was killed in the shooting. He sat through the debate and remained until the vote, even though it likely meant he missed his flight back home.
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Hours earlier, the grand jury in Broward County charged Nikolas Cruz, the suspect in the Feb. 14 massacre — one of the deadliest school shootings in American history — with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
The indictment of Mr. Cruz, who has confessed to the killings, was essentially a formality, and the primary legal debate now centers on whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty. Mr. Cruz’s lawyers have offered a plea bargain — consecutive life sentences without parole — in a bid to avoid a trial and the threat of execution.
“The only question is does he live or does he die?” said Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender, whose office is representing Mr. Cruz. “The question for the community, and specifically the victims’ families — is it worth what will be a three-year trial odyssey followed by a 15-year appellate odyssey?”
In the State Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, the provision to voluntarily arm trained school “guardians,” including librarians and school counselors, threatened to derail the legislation. But the families of all 17 people killed in Parkland sent House members a letter on Tuesday urging them to vote yes.
“You must act to prevent mass murder from ever occurring again at any school,” they wrote. “This issue cannot wait. The moment to pass this bill is now.”
On Thursday, several House Democrats cited the letter as the reason they would favor the proposal, even after the Democratic caucus took a formal position against it. The legislation prompted raw comments on the House floor and exposed a racial divide among Democrats: Black legislators warned their white counterparts that arming educators might result in discrimination against students of color.
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Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has not said if he will sign the bill into law. His own proposal after the Parkland shooting did not envision arming school personnel or requiring a waiting period for all gun purchases.
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