"Provoking a global trade war with reckless tweets puts American jobs and businesses at risk and increases costs for American families," Bennet stated. "The President's action motivated by his political whims rather than effective policy will invite retaliation and isolate us further from our trading partners."
In his Thursday announcement, Trump said that the United States had been treated unfairly by other states in bilateral trade and therefore would introduce 25-percent and 10-percent imports tariffs on steel and aluminum, respectively, to address the issue.
When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 2, 2018
Trump's announcement was met with condemnation from Washington's major trade partners, particularly Canada, China and the European Union, which accused Trump of excessive protectionism and pledged to impose countermeasures.
Speaking about the US move, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned that it might result in significant disruption to markets on both sides of the border.
"Any disruption to this integrated market would be significant and serious. But that is why we were impressing upon the American administration the unacceptable nature of these proposals that are going to hurt them every bit as much as they are going to hurt us, and we are confident we're going to continue to be able to defend Canadian industry," Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Ontario.
Our Steel and Aluminum industries (and many others) have been decimated by decades of unfair trade and bad policy with countries from around the world. We must not let our country, companies and workers be taken advantage of any longer. We want free, fair and SMART TRADE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 1, 2018
Russian legal experts are still assessing the possible impact of recent US tariffs on steel and aluminum although potential damage to the Russian economy will be less than to China or the European Union, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on Friday.
