CANADA/MEXICO/TARIFFS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley suggested today that U.S. and Canadian officials could be nearing a deal to lift the tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on steel and aluminum imports. Grassley, in a call with reporters, said he’s hopeful U.S. and Canadian officials are working to conclude negotiations ‘based on the fact that it seems to me … that they’re talking’…The Trump administration has met with Canadian and Mexican officials on and off for almost a year in an effort to remove the tariffs and replace them with quotas. However, both countries have pushed back against the Trump administration’s insistence on quotas, and it remains unclear what a deal to lift the tariffs would look like for the North American trading partners. Removing the duties, which Trump imposed on national security grounds, would clear a major hurdle in the effort to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in all three countries. Grassley has repeatedly called for the Trump administration to lift the tariffs, going so far as to say the USMCA is dead if the duties are not removed.”
–Sabrina Rodriguez, “Grassley says U.S., Canada could soon resolve steel tariffs,” Politico, May 14, 2019 10:56 am