Toomey bucking White House over trade policy, supporting bipartisan effort

[FakeNoose]

Pittsburgh Post Gazette June 27, 2018
Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2018/06/27/Toomey-picks-fight-with-White-House-over-trade-policy/stories/201806260181

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey has been a reliable supporter of Trump administration policies, but he has broken ranks with the White House over tariffs.

The Pennsylvania Republican’s position is consistent with his long-held support of free-market economics. What’s unusual, though, is that he has been outspoken about his disagreement with President Donald Trump, including in televised interviews in which he has said the president is playing a dangerous game that could spark a trade war.

Mr. Trump was able to unilaterally impose tariffs on steel and aluminum after the Commerce Department declared access to those commodities a national security issue, citing the military’s reliance on them for equipment.

Those tariffs are “a huge mistake,” Mr. Toomey told Bloomberg TV Tuesday.

“I’m in favor of a mutual and reciprocal winding down of tariffs but unfortunately, with respect to Canada and Mexico, that doesn’t seem to be the administration’s goal. It seems to be they want to sort of intimidate these countries into making concessions that will end up” to be worse than the North American Free Trade Agreement, he said.

Now Mr. Toomey is part of a bipartisan Senate coalition trying to dilute the White House’s power to invoke national security as a justification for tariffs. Frequent Trump critic Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., are the other prime sponsors of the effort to restrict that power, which comes from Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Their legislation would require congressional authorization.

All of a sudden Toomey grows a pair, and disagrees with Cheeto. But this is way too little, and way too late.