WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) - Washington will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada and Mexico from midnight on Thursday, ending months of uncertainty over potential exemptions and sharply escalating the risk of a trade war.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters in a telephone briefing that Washington would proceed with plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports, although he said the door was still open for negotiations without specifying what measures could be taken.
“We look forward to continued negotiations, both with Canada and Mexico on the one hand, and with the European Commission on the other hand, because there are other issues that we also need to get resolved,” Ross said.
The tariffs, which have prompted several challenges at the WTO, are aimed at allowing the U.S. steel and aluminum industries to increase their capacity utilization rates above 80 percent for the first time in years.
Worries about a U.S. trade war with the European Union weighed on Wall Street stocks at the open, but shares of U.S. steel and aluminum makers were up strongly.
President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to impose tariffs on car imports, is engaged in negotiations with China to reduce America’s yawning trade deficit and has said it will punish Beijing for stealing its technology by imposing tariffs on $50 billion of imports from China.
Ross himself heads to Beijing on Friday where he will attempt to get firm deals to export more U.S. goods in a bid to cut America’s $375 billion trade deficit with China.
After months in which it appeared the Trump administration had been backing away from tariffs amid infighting between the president’s top economic advisers, Washington has over
