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Japan Trip
The auto tariffs are opposed by both domestic and international car companies. If imposed, they would likely blow up trade negotiations launched with the EU and Japan, which Trump is due to visit later this month.

Members of Congress from both parties also argue the president is abusing powers delegated to him by Congress to pursue a protectionist agenda. A group of steel importers are lobbying the Supreme Court to hear their constitutional challenge to Trump’s use of Section 232 with other business groups starting to join the fight.

The invocation of national security is designed to exploit a loophole in global trading rules that allows countries to restrict trade in times of war. It also has caused a brewing fight between the U.S. and other members at the World Trade Organization that is expected to escalate in the coming months.

Until the Trump administration the U.S. regularly lobbied other governments to adopt a narrow view of national security with regards to trade for fear that if everyone invoked the exemption it would render global rules useless.


U.S. officials used that message with counterparts in Beijing for years, said Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the Crumpton Group, a Washington consultancy. China has long invoked national security to justify censorship of the internet and limit access by foreign firms to industries it deems strategic.

“The U.S. now thinks in a maximalist way about national security,’’ Blanchette said. The Huawei escalation in recent days is just one reason why a recent breakdown in talks between the U.S. and China seemed unlikely to be resolved any time soon, he added.

The Trump administration has from its early days rejected trade orthodoxy, insisting it is finally addressing global economic injustices that have hurt the U.S. for too long.

In a speech to students at Harvard University last month, White House adviser Peter Navarro said Trump was rejecting “conventional fossilized wisdom’’ to take on China’s “deviant economic model’’ and other trade cheats such as Germany, which Trump has nominated as a target for auto restrictions.


“America should be comforted by having a president who wakes up every day thinking about how to grow the economy faster and create jobs for Americans while protecting national security,’’ Navarro said.

(Updates with proclamation in third to sixth paragraphs.)
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-17/on-huawei-and-autos-trump-aligns-trade-with-security-doctrines