Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday that President Trump told him two weeks ago that he would not exempt Canada and Mexico from metals tariffs as part of a deal to get the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade through Congress.
Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters he and other senators had pointed out to Trump and top administration officials in a recent meeting that the steel and aluminum tariffs were an obstacle to getting Congress to approve the deal, and had been rebuffed.
“I said to the president, ‘Don’t you think the tariffs ought to come off?’ He said ‘No,'” Grassley said.
Canada and Mexico were initially exempted from the administration’s tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum when the levies were first implemented last year, but the administration removed the exemptions later in the year in order to pressure the countries during the negotiations over the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, a technically separate trade matter.
It was widely assumed the exemptions would be restored after the USMCA deal was reached, but Trump has thus far refused to do that. Lawmakers and the business community have lobbied the White House to restore the exemptions, saying that including Canada and Mexico in tariffs serves no purpose now that the deal is negotiated.
Grassley said that when he raised the issue in a meeting with Trump, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and trade adviser Peter Navarro, Navarro interrupted and said, “You cannot conflate the tariffs with the agreement. They are two separate things.”
“I said, “What do you mean? They were conflated when you started this thing!” Grassley said, adding that Lighthizer said they were negotiating for quotas instead. “Some people say that’s worse than tariffs,” Grassley added.
