The Trump administration has made three reckless moves on trade in recent days. On May 23, it launched an investigation into whether imports of cars and S.U.V.s threaten the national security of the United States. Then President Trump signaled that he’d let Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE off the hook, despite its “false statements” and repeated violations of United States sanctions on North Korea or Iran. Thursday brought a third misguided decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from our staunchest allies, including Canada and the European Union, again contending that their exports threaten our national security.
“Economic security is military security,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has said. But this administration’s push to blur, or even erase, the line between our economic and national security interests is dangerous — both for the United States and for the world.
First, the Trump administration is making overly broad interpretations of national security and then insisting these claims cannot be challenged. These actions undermine international law and threaten the rules-based global trading system.
The law being invoked to justify these new tariffs was crafted during the Cold War. It gives the president broad power to ensure that the United States is not overly dependent on imports for critical defense needs, especially imports from countries we don’t trust to supply us in times of war.
