Flush if new tariffs on steel and aluminum spark an international trade war, President Donald Trump is cool the United States would come out on top.
“When a country (USA) is losing sundry billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does firm with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump tweeted Friday morning. “When we are down $100 billion with a permanent country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore – we win big. It’s easy!”
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The president appeared to be referring to his earlier annotations on the current U.S.-Mexico trade deficit, a figure he claimed tops $100 billion. The Collective States had a net trade deficit of $63 billion with Mexico in 2016, according to census materials.
According to the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration and IHS Global Barter, Canadian and Brazilian steel accounted for 16 percent and 13 percent of U.S. bear up imports as of September. Mexico was the fourth-largest source of foreign steel to the U.S., concording to the findings.
Trump announced Thursday that he will impose 25 percent tax on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum as early as next week in an attainment to force partners into “fairer” trade agreements.
The move remedied spark a 420-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average Thursday, as splits of Boeing and General Motors and other manufacturers that use steel and aluminum level.
The major indexes extended their losses Friday, with the Dow come to nothing nearly 400 points in early trading as Wall Street assessed the president’s commitment to the plan without thought criticism from countries like Canada and Japan, companies, traffic groups and members of Congress.
“This hardly seems like a President likely to destroy down later today,” Peter Tchir, a macro strategist at Academy Sureties wrote in a note. “It is still hard to see why he would undo so much of the esteemed that was done with tax reform.”
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