Trump's National Security Claim for Tariffs Sets Off Crisis at W.T.O.
Source: New York Times
By Ana Swanson and Jack Ewing
Aug. 12, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s embrace of sweeping tariffs has frustrated allies, lawmakers and businesses across the globe. But its most lasting impact could be to hobble the World Trade Organization.
The global trade group has been thrust into an uncomfortable — and potentially damaging — role as chief judge in an intense fight among its most powerful members.
At the center of the battle is whether the United States’ claim that its sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs are necessary to protect national security or whether they are simply a ruse to protect American metal manufacturers from global competition. Allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union have challenged Mr. Trump’s tariffs at the World Trade Organization, saying their metals pose no threat to America’s national security. They have fired back with their own retaliatory tariffs, prompting the Trump administration to bring its own World Trade Organization complaints against those countries.
Any decision could prove to be the undoing of the World Trade Organization, which the United States helped establish in 1995 as a forum to settle trade disputes and to set rules that keep commerce flowing freely around the globe. A ruling against the Trump administration could prompt the United States to leave the W.T.O. entirely. But siding with the United States’ claim of national security could also significantly diminish the organization’s authority and prompt other countries to begin citing their own national security interests to ignore inconvenient rules on topics like intellectual property, environmental standards or farm subsidies.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/12/us/politics/trumps-tariffs-foster-crisis-at-the-wto.html
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