Trump plans new tariffs on steel, aluminum imports

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said Thursday he plans to levy new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as soon as next week. The tariffs would tax steel imports 25 percent and impose a 10 percent fee on aluminum imports. “We’re going to build our steel industry back and we’re going to build our aluminum industry back,” the president said during a White House meeting with 15 executives from the steel and aluminum industries and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Trump said the decision comes from newly discovered security risks found with certain imports and the desire to create more jobs for U.S. steel and aluminum workers. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the administration plans to unveil more details about the tariffs next week. But the plan did not sit well with Republicans on Capitol Hill. “The president is proposing a massive tax increase on American families,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a statement. “You’d expect a policy this bad from a leftist administration, not a supposedly Republican one.” But Trump adamantly defended the need to make other countries pay more to export materials to the United States. “You will immediately be expanding if we give you that level playing field,” he told the steel and aluminum executives. “Your workers are going to be very happy.”