Commerce Secretary Says Trump Didn't Miss Deadline, Section 232 Tariffs on Autos Could Happen
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department refused to release the report explaining why auto imports are a national security threat, said people don't understand how the Section 232 statute operates. The president gave the U.S. trade representative 180 days to see if he could negotiate with Europe a mitigation of the security threat represented by auto imports. But when that 180 days expired, and Trump took no action, that doesn't mean the case is closed, Ross told Bloomberg.
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Ross said in November that Trump decided to keep negotiating, adding that the November deadline “was an imaginary deadline,” and that Trump took a decision at that time. “We have a perfect justification to put tariffs on if we wish to; the president decided it was better to negotiate,” Ross said in an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos Jan. 22. “We’ve had constructive negotiations with the German car manufacturers, with the Koreans and with the Japanese. So far we haven’t felt the need to do it. But if people do silly things, if they do protectionist and discriminatory things, like pillar one of the digital services tax, we’re obviously going to respond.”