COMMERCE/ECONOMY/TARIFFS/TRADE DEALS/TREASURY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Since President Donald Trump announced plans last week to hit steel and aluminum imports with new tariffs, his trade adviser Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have been all over television celebrating their victory and rebutting suggestions that the move would incite a damaging trade war.
But economic adviser Gary Cohn and other free-trade advocates inside the White House and the Treasury Department are mounting a last-ditch effort to blunt the impact of Trump’s head-turning decision, even as the president insisted Monday [3-5-18] that he wasn’t going to be convinced out of it.
Cohn and like-minded officials in the administration are hoping the parade of senior GOP lawmakers, donors, lobbyists and business groups loudly opposing the pending decision will convince Trump that his proposed tariffs will damage the U.S. economy. There was a growing sense among some administration officials that the best way to talk Trump out of the tariffs was to make sure he hears from people outside of the White House, since he’s ignoring advisers inside the building…
The meeting is meant to counter the session with steel and aluminum industry executives last week in which Trump stunned the world by announcing he would slap tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum.”
-Andrew Restuccia, Ben White, and Nancy Cook, “Frustrated White House free traders mount campaign to weaken Trump tariffs,” Politico, Mar. 5, 2018 07:16pm