Tariff Terrorist Trump, Meet Tariff-Cutting Congress

Yay! Cheaper GAP vest soon care of...American politicians?

I will soon have (rather lots) more to say about the upcoming Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum. Since the US Trade Representative has not yet finalized the terms as to whether some countries or US domestic industries buying from abroad are exempt among other details, there is still some uncertainty about their ultimate form. That is, the full extent of the economic terror Trump will unleash on global markets is still up in the air.

In the meantime, though, consider this: the American congress is considering legislation that will cut tariffs on a grab-bag of imported goods currently falling under the miscellaneous tariff bill. So, it's like a push-pull set of messages from the American executive and legislature that's got us foreigners rather confused. A handful of protectionist US lawmakers still want to keep it largely intact, though:

Even as President Trump threatens to slap protective tariffs on steel and aluminum, lawmakers are moving forward with legislation to lower trade barriers on hundreds of other products, from chemicals to toasters, in a bid to lower costs for U.S. companies and consumers.

Supporters of the so-called miscellaneous tariff bill, which unanimously passed the House of Representatives in January, say it would boost the economy by getting rid of tariffs designed to protect U.S. industries that no longer exist. The National Association of Manufacturers says U.S. companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars each year on unnecessary import fees.

Critics say that miscellaneous tariff bills, which began decades ago as modest efforts to help U.S. manufacturers, have in recent years become sprawling packages of tariff reductions that undercut domestic producers without the means to defend their interests in Washington.

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who worked to get several products removed from the current bill, said Congress should do a better job to ensure tariff reductions do not impede U.S. producers. “Miscellaneous Tariff Bills should help, not hurt American manufacturers,” Brown said in a statement to Reuters.

The original bill is said to have become severely distorted. Intended to lower the cost of importing intermediate goods American manufacturers purchase from abroad, it's since become a sprawling bit of legislation covering more of finished articles:

Miscellaneous tariff bills were originally conceived in the 1980s as a way of lowering costs for U.S. manufacturers that could not get chemicals and other component products from domestic sources. The original point of the efforts“was to encourage domestic manufacturing,” recalls Jennifer Hillman, who worked on the legislation as a Senate staffer in the 1980s and 1990s.

All but two of the 163 items in a 1999 version of the bill, for example, were used in the manufacturing process, according to a House Ways and Means Committee report. Since then, Congress has broadened successive tariff bills to include many finished products that can go straight to store shelves.

Only 55 percent of the items in the current bill are“intermediate goods” used in manufacturing, according to applications filed with the International Trade Commission. Many of the rest are finished consumer products. 

The apparent disjoint between Trumpian protectionism and the apparently more favorable trade outlook of American lawmakers does reflect wider societal conflicts over the desirability of free trade. Even within the Republican party alone, there is a pronounced difference of opinion. Meanwhile, those of us in the rest of the world will have to learn the nuances of US political economy to come up with an informed view of how this key trading nation treats the issue.