Trump's Illegitimate Use Of National Security For His Tariffs Does Not Bode Well For The Future

It is pretty much agreed by all serious economists and even Trump’s own White House Council of Economic Advisers that the new tariff wars fomented by this administration will actually cost US jobs. The US Chamber of Commerce believes that Trump’s trade policies will cost 2.6 million American jobs. What has gotten slightly less attention is the Trump administration’s abuse of the national security process in order to implement the steel and aluminum tariffs, an abuse that effectively locked Congress out of the decision and will make these tariffs very easy for the other countries effected to challenge under the WTO.

The Trump administration had real difficulty coming up with a legal basis for unilaterally implementing the steel and aluminum tariffs without congressional approval so they used the an exception allowed under the Trade Adjustment Act of 1962. Section 232 of that Act allowed a president to block imports determined to be a threat to national security without congressional approval or a review by the US International Trade Commission.

Wilbur Ross and the Commerce Department dutifully provided such a national security finding and recommended steep tariffs on steel and aluminum. That finding, however, was immediately undercut by Secretary of Defense James Mattis who sent a memorandum to Ross stating “The U.S. military requirements for steel and aluminum each represent only about 3% of U.S. production. Therefore, DoD does not believe that the findings in the reports impact the ability of DoD programs to acquire the steel or aluminum necessary to meet national defense requirements.”

It has been noted by Ross and others supportive of Trump’s actions that George W. Bush also instituted steel tariffs back in 2002, as though that provides some precedent for Trump’s actions. Besides ignoring the fact that those steel tariffs were a failure that cost American jobs and were soon rescinded, Ross and others also fail to note that Bush used his power under Section 201 of the Trade Adjustment Act which allowed for temporary tariffs as an anti-dumping measure and also required a sign-off from the US International Trade Commission. The tariffs were specifically not imposed under the national security rationale despite the fact that the US was at that time engaged in a war in Afghanistan.

Perhaps I am just overly sensitive to the abuses of the Trump administration and the Republican party of today. But, as the President’s current obsession with his unconstrained pardon power clearly shows, Trump’s instinct is to exploit to the extreme the areas where his power is virtually unlimited. Obviously, the fear now is that Trump will see the success of this essentially bogus national security argument and look for other areas to exploit that power which may be far beyond his trade policies. And the fact that Trump’s essentially fraudulent use of his national security power has largely flown under the radar in the tariff issue will allow him to interpret that as an acceptable option that will create little pushback. And that does not bode well for our democracy in the near future.

And one last point. This story also highlights how the Trump administration has thoroughly corrupted the independence of our federal agencies. The Council of Economic Adviser’s study that shows these tariffs will actually cost American jobs will not be released because it counters Trump policy. But the Commerce Department will dutifully create a report showing a national security threat to the US steel and aluminum industry that everyone, even members of Trump’s own administration, knows full well is patently absurd and backed up by no factual data at all.