Trump's "pre-empted" announcement of 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs underlined his "America First" message that the U.S. will no longer tolerate unfair, illegal trade practices from abroad. We would have preferred a more targeted approach to illegal dumping of aluminum and steel into the states and still hope that he will throttle it back next week allaying concerns from our closet allies, especially Canada.
Let's state a few facts: the U.S runs a $566 billion dollar trade deficit with the world, $375 billion with China alone, which penalizes our economic growth, jobs and balance