Cantwell Decries Trump Tariffs on Steel, Aluminum

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is most unhappy with the Trump administration's 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The "no-exemption, no-exception" tariffs take effect in March.

"It's a big deal," Trump exclaimed at an Oval Office proclamation signing. "It's the beginning of making America rich again...the failed American trade policies have led our once-incredible United States steel and aluminum industries" down a ruinous path.

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But according to Cantwell, the previous Trump tariffs, imposed in 2018, were a needless drain on Americans' pocketbooks.

“Tariffs are a distortion of markets," she asserted on the Senate floor. "Tariffs mean we disagree. It very rarely means the disagreement will be resolved quickly. It usually means people will retaliate, and the escalation of that retaliation will hurt consumers so much so that eventually someone will blink."

“The payers in this dispute, though, are never the government leaders. No, it's the workers who lose their job. It's the family that pays higher cost. It's the community that loses their economic activity and tax revenue.”

She says the increased tariffs only serve to ratchet up costs even higher, and are especially bad for Washington, a major aerospace and electronics hub where "two out of every five jobs" are trade-related. The state imported over $2.1B in steel and aluminum last year.

Past tariffs led to punitive counter-measures and were a drag, Cantwell says, on national production.

Particularly damaging, according to Cantwell, was India's 20% retaliatory tariff on American-grown apples, "which devastated Washington state’s apple exports. India had once been the second-largest export market for American apples, but after then-President Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum in his first term, India imposed retaliatory tariffs in response and U.S. apple exports plummeted."

In that same floor speech, Cantwell assailed Trump-style protectionism as a malevolent force that actually inhibits not only job creation and economic health, but also U.S. standing in the world.

“To outcompete our adversaries, we need coalitions, not go-it-alone strategies. Why do we fear this if we think our principles are correct? But somehow the current administration thinks that we've been hurt more than we've been helped in this global equation, and they want us to believe that somehow there is a win-win situation on tariffs that they can deliver on."

She also voted against Howard Lutnick’s nomination for Commerce Secretary due to his pro-tariff militancy.