BREAKING: US Plans to Impose EU With Steel, Aluminum Tariffs

Here comes more mercantilist ignoramus economic policy from the Stable Genuis.

The Trump administration, unable to win concessions from European Union counterparts ahead of a Friday deadline, is planning to make good on a threat to apply tariffs on European steel and aluminum as early as Thursday, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Trump announced in March global tariffs of 25% on imported steel, and 10% on aluminum, based on national security concerns. The White House delayed implementation for some countries, giving those trading partners a chance to offer concessions to avoid the tariffs.

The U.S. is now planning to let the EU’s exemption lapse.

According to WSJ, one person familiar with the matter said the administration’s plans could still change, particularly if the two sides are able to cobble together a last-minute deal, though both sides suggest such a deal is unlikely.

-RW  

UPDATE

Here is Murray Rothbard on trade protectionism:

[P]rotectionism is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense, destructive of all economic prosperity. We are not, if we were ever, a world ofself,sufficient farmers. The market economy is one vast latticework throughout the world, in which each individual, each region, each country, produces what he or it is best at, most relatively efficient in, and exchanges that product for the goods and services of others. Without the division of labor and the trade based upon that division, the entire world would starve. Coerced restraints on trade-such as protectionism-cripple, hobble, and destroy trade, the source of life and prosperity. Protectionism is simply a plea that consumers, as well as general prosperity, be hurt so as to confer permanent special privilege upon groups of inefficient producers, at the expense of competent firms and of consumers. But it is a peculiarly destructive kind of bailout, because it permanently shackles trade under the cloak of patriotism.