It reveals the nature of the position of each party.
The US is targeting tariffs to correct perceived trade wrongs, where foreign nations have barriers that the US does not have. Or in the case of some foreign steel, it's often dumped globally, backed with State subsidies to facilitate that.
Take Russian steel as one example. It's extremely difficult to do business in Russia and to sell major industrial products like steel into Russia. Why should the US buy any steel from Russia, when the US is highly capable of producing that steel domestically instead? It makes no sense to tolerate Russia's hyper nationalist protectionism in major industry and continue buying steel from them. Reciprocating their market behavior back toward them means that Russia never gets to sell steel into the US again.
Russia buys very little from the US, representing 0.03% of the US economy. The US imports from Russia, including a lot of steel, are equal to 1.5% of the Russian economy. It's obvious which party has a lot to lose there, there's a 50 fold gap in importance to the economy.
The EU and China by contrast to the US tariffs, started out targeting the US on political grounds. That tells you everything you need to know. It's because the US has extremely low tariffs overall, and particularly extraordinarily low tariffs on agriculture. These other trade parties have very few angles of attack that aren't political in nature because the US has such a generally open economy.
The US is targeting tariffs to correct perceived trade wrongs, where foreign nations have barriers that the US does not have. Or in the case of some foreign steel, it's often dumped globally, backed with State subsidies to facilitate that.
Take Russian steel as one example. It's extremely difficult to do business in Russia and to sell major industrial products like steel into Russia. Why should the US buy any steel from Russia, when the US is highly capable of producing that steel domestically instead? It makes no sense to tolerate Russia's hyper nationalist protectionism in major industry and continue buying steel from them. Reciprocating their market behavior back toward them means that Russia never gets to sell steel into the US again.
Russia buys very little from the US, representing 0.03% of the US economy. The US imports from Russia, including a lot of steel, are equal to 1.5% of the Russian economy. It's obvious which party has a lot to lose there, there's a 50 fold gap in importance to the economy.
The EU and China by contrast to the US tariffs, started out targeting the US on political grounds. That tells you everything you need to know. It's because the US has extremely low tariffs overall, and particularly extraordinarily low tariffs on agriculture. These other trade parties have very few angles of attack that aren't political in nature because the US has such a generally open economy.