US Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, today sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reiterating Chairman Johnson’s earlier request for data and information about the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel imports earlier this year.
According to a press release from the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, the US DOC did not fully respond to Chairman Johnson’s earlier request, sent March 8, 2018. In the letter sent today, Johnson and McCaskill notified the Commerce Department that the committee may consider a subpoena if the Department does not comply in full.
“Respectfully, your response is incomplete and ignores what should be the basis for all trade discussions—to do no economic harm,” the senators wrote to Secretary Ross. “In your response, you wrote that you ‘do not believe that the economic impact in the form of higher input costs will be as dramatic as many claim.’ However, you did not offer statistical justification or data to support your statement. Instead, you provided two anecdotal examples about the cost of a can of soup and the cost of a car.”
The senators said the tariffs will have “a much more far-reaching effect on downstream industries and consumer prices,” noting they have heard from several Wisconsin- and Missouri-based manufacturers and other US companies in downstream industries that are already facing higher input costs that will continue to ripple throughout the US economy.
Specifically, the senators are requesting detailed analysis on the tariffs’ effects on downstream industries; the steel and aluminum requirements for national security, especially how they differ from opposite conclusions the department reached in 2001; a retrospective economic analysis; and the DOC’s metrics for success.
“The American people and American industries deserve to know the consequences of the steel and aluminum tariffs,” the letter concluded, adding that if the DOC does not produce the entirety of the information requested in Chairman Johnson’s original letter by May 17, 2018, the Committee may be forced to consider the use of compulsory process, including subpoenas.