For Trump’s numbers, close enough is frequently good enough

President Trump signed controversial orders to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum on Thursday, while surrounded by steelworkers.

There’s no denying that domestic steel and aluminum producers have been at a disadvantage, but Trump’s tariffs promise to create more losers than winners.

Trump said on Friday he was ready to work out an exception for Australia, while Japan, South Korea, the European Union and Brazil called for similar treatment.

“National security is paramount, but we should not undercut our key trading partners and strategic allies with broad-based tariffs that raise taxes on American consumers and close markets for USA products”, she said in a statement released Friday.

Another law grants extensive powers to the president to negotiate trade agreements, allowing some 15 accords to be struck since 1979.

A Mexican government official also denied that any concessions were offered to Washington.

And when it comes to steel and aluminium imports to the US, China barely ranks.

And now, the Great White North is engaged in what is seen as a battle over the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)’s future.

“I do think the possibility of NAFTA partners walking away from the table mattered quite a bit”, the lobbyist said.

“FAIR!”, Trump posted on his Twitter page.

“Due to the unique nature of our relationship with Canada and Mexico … we’re gonna hold off the tariff for those two countries”, Trump said during a signing ceremony. The high expectations of his supporters put the pressure on Trump to either kill NAFTA or restructure it dramatically, he said.

Trade wars are bad, not good, and no country ever “wins” one.

U.S. Steel lauded Trump’s tariffs and said it would be restarting one of its two idled blast furnaces at a steel plant in IL that will create 500 new jobs.

“We didn’t know exactly what the exclusion was until it got announced”, Gerard, who is Canadian, told Reuters.

Discounting that contribution to United States trade ignores a significant part of what makes the U.S. economy tick.

Trump on Friday tweeted that he had spoken with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and said there was an agreement in the works to avoid steel and aluminum tariffs on the key USA ally whose leader Trump has clashed with in the past.

Trump has stood by the tariffs, despite resistance from his fellow Republicans and other countries, which have vowed to respond with levies of their own.

“We so often when we enforce trade rules it takes so long and the process is so arduous that so many jobs are lost and so many small businesses go out of business in the process”, said Brown.

Trump signaled yesterday he’d hold the exemption as a bargaining chip to play if he didn’t get what he wants for the USA out of the NAFTA negotiation. “The president’s action, motivated by his political whims rather than effective policy, will invite retaliation and isolate us further from our trading partners”. DeBusk says she suspects that “other countries don’t want to come to the U.S.as beggars (seeking) mercy”. Since then, Canadian lawmakers and industry insiders have been lobbying the U.S.to honour Canada’s partnership in an enmeshed, integrated steel industry in North America.

If they offer something in return for favorable treatment – like, say, the increases in military spending Trump has demanded from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies – they could encourage the president to use access to the USA market as a cudgel in the future.