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U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey took aim at one of President Donald Trump’s key fiscal policies on Wednesday.
“Trade wars are very dangerous,” Toomey said during a bipartisan anti-tariff D.C. press conference where lawmakers were joined by small business owners, farmers and grassroots campaigners.
Trump’s road to victory was paved with promises that he would revive American manufacturing, punish companies that send jobs overseas, pull the nation out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and renegotiate other deals, especially the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994.
The latest battle is over Trump’s proposed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), intended as a successor to NAFTA.
Trump is absolutely right that corporations have been allowed to profit from such trade agreements at the expense of working families. Will his tactics truly turn back the tide?
Toomey has his doubts, as do other Republicans.
Last year, the president imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on most other countries, including Canada and Mexico. It appears Trump is holding fast on the tariffs, apparently as a bargaining chip for USMCA — a chip to be used against members of his own party, if needed.
Toomey granted the metal tariffs may have helped bring those countries back to the negotiating table, but cited a study that warns of further economic damage — including the loss of nearly 1 million jobs — if trade wars escalate.
“Very briefly, the impact on Pennsylvania is very real from the steel tariffs that were imposed under President Trump’s direction in provoking section 232 of our trade law which purports that the trade with Canada and Mexico in particular in steel and aluminum are somehow a threat to national security,” Toomey said.
It would be an understatement to call Toomey a pro-business fiscal conservative. He has carefully but insistently underscored his differences with Trump on trade issues almost since the president took office.
It is no surprise, then, how many working Americans — including many Democrats — put more trust and hope in Trump than in traditional Republicans, such as Toomey.
Campaigning to crowds in states such as ours, which have bled away manufacturing jobs, Trump laid a significant amount of blame on NAFTA, its architects and supporters — including the Clinton and Bush dynasties — for not doing more to protect American workers in designing and enforcing the deal over the past quarter-century.
Who’s right?
We understand the desire of working Americans to embrace Trump’s bold, direct tactics as a welcome change to the complexities of trade deals that have failed to prevent the loss of millions of jobs over the past generation.
At the same time, there is evidence Trump’s unilateral tactics have actually resulted in job losses by sparking trade wars that led to an increase in the cost of raw materials used by American manufacturers, to cite one key example. And there is fear about additional tariffs set to take effect March 1 and international retaliation.
Make no mistake, this also is a war between Congress and the president over who has the control to impose such tariffs.
In a very basic sense, we applaud the president for making trade and job losses a central focus of discussion in a way it had not been for far too long.
His unilateral tactics, however, pose real dangers to the stability of America’s economy while provoking ruinous trade wars with friend and foe alike. We agree with Toomey that this is a dangerous approach.
We also encourage representatives of both parties to engage with the president constructively to pass deals that preserve our access to materials and markets while doing more to protect American jobs.
— Times Leader