BUSINESS/ECONOMY/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Manufacturing executives who use the metals to make beer cans, cars, refrigerators and other goods warn of price surges, shortages and retaliatory trade barriers on U.S. exports if the administration follows through on the plan, announced Thursday [3-1-18], to impose 25% tariffs on imported steel and 10% duties on aluminum imports. They also complain that a lack of detail about President Donald Trump’s plan has injected unknowns into their business planning. ‘It’s the uncertainty that has many people concerned,’ said John Hayes, chief executive of Ball Corp., a major producer of beverage cans and metal food packaging with about 9,000 U.S. workers. ‘We don’t know what products it’s on. We don’t know from which countries it’s on. We don’t know how it’s going to be implemented.’ … The administration’s most prominent trade hawks took to the airwaves Sunday to play down concerns. They said the U.S. would apply steel and aluminum barriers expansively, leaving no country exempt. ‘The notion that it would destroy a lot of jobs, raise prices, disrupt things, is wrong,’ Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on ABC. He said the tariffs would be valued at $9 billion, a fraction of overall U.S. economic output, which is $19 trillion a year.”
-Andrew Tangel, Harriet Torry and Mike Colias, “Trump Administration Beats Back Warnings on Tariffs: Trading partners, U.S. companies voice concerns over proposal on steel and aluminum,” The Wall Street Journal online, Mar. 4, 2018 11:12PM