Beyond all the obvious and already apparent economic damage they have done at home, U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on steel and aluminum hide an even darker truth: They threaten to undermine broader U.S. strategy in almost every theater by deliberately targeting allies with arbitrary trade restrictions.
It could even get worse, if the Trump administration’s plans for broader, “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every country in the world are next down the pike; those would be particularly problematic for would-be U.S. partners in South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as further spoiling relations with Europe. (While those plans are still afoot, they don’t appear to be coming this week.)
Beyond all the obvious and already apparent economic damage they have done at home, U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on steel and aluminum hide an even darker truth: They threaten to undermine broader U.S. strategy in almost every theater by deliberately targeting allies with arbitrary trade restrictions.
It could even get worse, if the Trump administration’s plans for broader, “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every country in the world are next down the pike; those would be particularly problematic for would-be U.S. partners in South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as further spoiling relations with Europe. (While those plans are still afoot, they don’t appear to be coming this week.)
Of course, the Trump administration’s self-defeating moves are not limited to trade. The evisceration of the U.S. Agency for International Development has, as promised, already opened the door to greater Chinese influence in the developing world. The confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard as U.S. intelligence chief will almost certainly limit intelligence sharing by allies. Trump’s plan to seize Gaza has roiled allies and partners in the Middle East; his other proposed land grabs have alarmed allies and partners in Europe and the Americas.
But Trump’s 25 percent import duties on steel and aluminum, announced Monday and slated to go into effect next month, are a clear illustration of how the president’s economic policies will not just work against all his own economic pledges (by raising prices, killing jobs, and slowing growth), but will also be counterproductive at a strategic level. That’s especially ironic, since the tariffs were implemented in the name of protecting U.S. national security.
For starters, although Trump’s stated concern with the health of the steel and aluminum industries is all about China and its flood of cheap steel, all the pain is directed squarely at U.S. allies and partners, such as Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea. The same week that Trump poured sand into the gears of the European and NATO economies, his defense secretary went to Brussels to urge a more muscular military alliance, which would require healthy economies to sustain greater defense spending.
“The enthusiasm of our allies and partners to work with us on the myriad of global security and economic challenges will only be dampened week by week as new tariff threats are issued,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
To really understand how counterproductive Trump’s latest tariffs are to ostensible U.S. national security goals, look no further than war-battered Ukraine.
The Trump administration has sought to increase pressure on Russia and work toward a negotiated end to the three-year war, including working to ensure continued European support for an independent postwar Ukraine. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, told NATO Wednesday that a prosperous Ukraine is the goal and fulcrum of U.S. diplomacy to end the war. And yet Ukraine’s tiny steel sector, already badly shrunken due to the Russian occupation, comes in for special vitriol in Trump’s latest executive order.
“I have determined that steel articles imports from Ukraine threaten to impair the national security,” Trump explained as he removed the waiver that the Biden administration had given Kyiv in order to help prop up one of the key motors of Ukraine’s already war-stressed economy.
That dire threat comes in the form of not quite 1 million tons of Ukrainian pig iron (used in steel production) and 100,000 tons of steel pipes. The reason those are the only products Ukraine exports to the United States is because every other segment has been under separate U.S. tariffs, in some cases since last century. The United States produces about 80 million tons of steel per year.
“Ukraine’s steel exports to the United States is 0.3 percent of U.S. imports. We are nothing. There is no ground for barriers against Ukraine,” said Stanislav Zinchenko, chief executive of GMK Center, a Ukraine-based industrial consultancy. Ukraine’s steel and iron sales to the United States are a drop in the bucket in the U.S. market, but they are a huge deal for Ukraine, accounting for more than half of the country’s exports to the United States.
“If we stop exports, we will produce less steel, and our steel companies are our biggest taxpayers, paying more than $6 billion in the last five years, so Ukraine will just need more financial support from Europe and the United States,” Zinchenko said.
And if Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow can come up with a negotiated solution to the war, then the big challenge will be the reconstruction of a country that has sustained at least half a trillion dollars in damage at Russian hands. That will require a healthy Ukrainian steel industry, not one hamstrung by arbitrary barriers.
“The materials needed for the postwar recovery are energy, cement, steel, and agriculture. Steel is one of the most important materials, and we cannot do it on imported steel,” Zinchenko said, underscoring the need to ensure that Ukraine’s already shrunken steel industry doesn’t wither away altogether.
Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko acknowledged that the tariffs and the loss of U.S. waivers “will naturally affect the steel industry.” Like nearly every other country targeted by Trump’s latest measures, Ukraine is hoping to carve out some relief in the month before the new duties take effect. But Trump made clear in his executive order that his own prior carveouts to previous steel and aluminum tariffs for select countries helped undermine whatever the tariffs were meant to achieve, indicating that exemptions and exceptions are not likely this time around.
That’s not stopping U.S. allies from lobbying. Japan has already asked for relief, and South Korea is trying. Australia is clinging to hopeful vibes from a chat with Trump but may still be disappointed. Mexico and Canada are already on a suspended sentence from earlier tariff threats. The United Kingdom doesn’t know what to think, while the European Union is already plotting retaliation—and warning of the crystal-clear consequences of Trump’s war on allies when the big shared threat is not even in the crosshairs.
“The one laughing on the side is China” while Europe and the United States get bogged down in mutually destructive trade wars, said Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief.
Even countries that are not formal allies are feeling the counterproductive pressure. For years, the United States has sought to woo India away from its continued economic and military ties with Russia, and make it the centerpiece of a balancing coalition against China in the Indian Ocean region. Secretary of State Marco Rubio put the Quad, an Indo-Pacific grouping including the United States and India, front and center of U.S. diplomacy on day one. But India, like everyone else, is targeted by the new steel tariffs, and would likely be first in line for serious trade pain if and when the Trump administration unveils its broader “reciprocal” tariffs.
“The tariffs will also divert attention from other pressing matters,” Cutler said. “When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with President Trump later this week, he will now need to devote time to pitching for a steel exemption at the expense of spending needed time on other pressing regional and global issues where U.S.-India cooperation can make a difference.”
2025-02-12 19:03:00
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