March 2, 2018
Dear Mr. President,
I may be a little out of my depth here, but I'd like to
weigh in on your recent decision to put a 25% tax on steel imports and a 10%
tax on aluminum imports coming into this country (because sometimes an
unvarnished outsider's perspective really can help to clarify things).
From where I'm sitting you, and your administration, have
had a colossally awful couple of weeks.
You're losing critical staff left and right, every teenager in America
hates you, massive gun control rallies are planned all over the country for
later this month, your good buddies at the NRA are publicly dissing you, and
calling Jeff Sessions mean names on Twitter seems to have backfired. So I totally understand your need to save
face and do something to rally your voter base.
In other words, you need a "win". I get it.
But imposing huge tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and possibly sparking
a global trade war is not the best way to do that.
Republican Senator Ben Sasse said, "You'd expect a
policy this bad from a leftist administration not a supposedly Republican
one." The Canadian Foreign Minister
as well as several officials from the EU
also made very derogatory public comments about your plan. And China flat out said it was,
"stupid." (I am not making
this up. They literally said it was
"stupid".)
These tariffs will definitely make the steel and aluminum
industry happy, but they are the only
people who will be happy because these tariffs will most likely increase prices
for American consumers. Anything an
American might want to purchase that is made with steel or aluminum will be
more expensive plus prices on things
that we import from other countries will probably rise as our trading partners
seek retaliation for your short-sighted protectionism. So basically, it looks as if you have
prioritized the needs of 115,000 steel and aluminum workers over the needs of
millions of consumers. Hmmmmm, I'm not
an economist but this seems like a bad idea to me.
I guess this is what happens when your most trusted advisor
is yourself and yourself doesn't really know what he's doing.
Sincerely,
Amy Beaton
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