Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross determined in February 2019 that auto imports posed a threat to national security and recommended that then-President Donald Trump consider imposing tariffs of up to 25 or 35 percent, according to a long-awaited report released on Tuesday by the Commerce Department.
Trump never acted on the recommendation, despite frequently threatening to impose tariffs on imported cars during his presidency.
"A quick glance confirms what we expected," Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said in a statement. "The justification for these tariffs was so entirely unfounded that even the authors were too embarrassed to let it see the light of day.”
When it started: Ross initiated the investigation under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act at Trump's behest in May 2018. That was the same year that Trump imposed duties on steel and aluminum imports around the world using the Section 232 statute.
The rarely used trade law allows the president to restrict imports to protect national security. However, there was widespread opposition to imposing Section 232 tariffs on imported autos, even within the U.S. auto industry.
Ross frustrated critics of the Section 232 auto investigation by refusing to release the auto report, even after Congress passed a Toomey amendment ordering the administration to do so.
“The Commerce Department has a statutory obligation to Congress, and to the American people, to release all of their Section 232 reports," Toomey said Tuesday. "It was wholly unacceptable that the previous administration defied federal law and refused to release this report."
He commended current Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and the Biden administration for making the report public.
What Ross recommended: Mexico and Canada, during talks with the Trump administration on what became the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, negotiated agreements to shield themselves from any 232 tariffs as long as their shipments to the United States did not exceed a certain level.
Ross gave Trump three options to consider: negotiate similar agreements with other nations that exported autos to the U.S.; impose a 25 percent tariff on autos and auto parts; or impose a 35 percent tariff on sports utility vehicles and crossover utility vehicles.
What's next: Toomey has also called for the release of four other Section 232 investigations started by the Trump administration related to imports of uranium ore, titanium sponges, transformers and their components, and vanadium.
The Trump administration concluded the first two of those investigations without taking action and left the other two for the Biden administration to finish. There was no word Tuesday on release of those four reports.
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