08 July, 2017
The EU might impose retaliatory duties on whiskey, orange juice and dairy products should the USA decide to raise steel tariffs, the Financial Times reported that day.
Donald Trump has been hoping China would pressure North Korea to behave itself, perhaps by restricting trade with the hermit kingdom.
This is not wild speculation. Germany is a large exporter of steel and officials there worry they could be caught in any US crackdown.
The Commerce Department was close to recommending new restrictions, but other top Trump advisers warned it could lead to major economic fallout-including for US industries. But this should be done on a careful, a la carte basis, starting with formal protests of unfair practices.
As the Trump administration presses the Chinese leadership to deal more proactively with Pyongyang, it must also be able to robustly defend U.S. interests in the South China Sea, raise human rights concerns, and identify common regional and global challenges where our countries can work together constructively.
Policies that could fall under national security include China's new Cyber Security Act, which is under WTO scrutiny from Japan, South Korea, the United States and others; Ukraine's gas pipeline reforms; and Russia's trade restrictions on Ukraine.
The International Fair Trade Alliance (IFTA) opposes tariffs or other restrictions on United States imports of primary aluminum, because such restrictions "would only bolster China's determination to export illegally subsidized and unfairly traded semifabricated aluminum products", it said.
On the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, Trump is scheduled to meet for the first time his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. It is "the wrong tool to deploy to defend the U.S. steel industry from dumping driven by global steel overcapacity, particularly if it harms the USA's allies", director-general Axel Eggert said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has also defended free trade in several speeches. The official said the issue was consuming significant time.
The G7, which includes Canada, Japan, the USA and several European countries, have called for a solution to global overcapacity in steel, and the European Union has previously accused China of steel dumping while levying duties of its own.
The report was published this week ahead of the G20 summit of world leaders, where trade could be a flashpoint. While a Section 232 investigation can take a year, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross set an end of June deadline.
Ross said American businesses are more anxious about asymmetric market access, in which they're blocked from operating or acquiring in large swathes of the economy while Chinese companies are mostly unencumbered in the U.S. Bigger Chinese commitments are needed to lower barriers for the U.S. firms, he said, calling the new foreign investment guidelines "limited progress" toward leveling the playing field. "The root of the problem is China, and Japan is not causing any damage", he said, according to a Japanese official.
A number of trade experts said it remains unclear whether Trump is simply threatening tariffs as a way to lure other countries to offer him concessions, or if he will follow through on new restrictions.
Trade analysts expect G-20 leaders to persuade Trump to eschew national security tariffs on steel and aluminum because of the blow-back effect they could have on the stability of the global trading system.
Trump's own administration is divided over whether to impose new steel trade barriers.
The leaders see the global economy as recovering, but agreed that risks remain. "There's been very substantive issues discussed", he said without going into more detail.
Such gains are less impressive in a broader context of the world's largest trading nation: China's customs data show total beef imports stood at $2.5 billion in 2016, while crude purchases totaled $116.5 billion - and machinery imports came in at $771.4 billion.
