mexico, you know, be a brother? i didn't hesitate. i said no, this is my job, i can't do that. i took them in. what i remember about that encounter is asking their names, and i remember introducing myself to them. i remember wanting to remember them, because i have a for their child to be safe. them, because i have a connection. i wanted that women to to be -- that woman to be safe, and went back on control and had names.en their i the reason that encounter sticks with me so much, i think that is the first step in names. dehumanization, forgetting what makes someone an individual. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span "q&a." >> next, a look at the potential impact of new tariffs on

aluminumsteel and approved by president trump earlier this week, and set to go into effect later in the month. from the heritage foundation, this is about one hour. >> thank you so much, as always, for the very kind introduction. a are here, as always, in very timely fashion at the heritage foundation, speaking of session 232. i am so pleased for our panelists to be joining us today. i want to start by setting the stage. we all know why we are gathered here today. but the president signed yesterday two proclamations on section 232 to implement tariffs on steel and aluminum. 25% on steel, and 10% on aluminum. the president did say there will be exemptions for canada and

mexico, somehow tied to their renegotiation of nafta. also a process for other countries who are allies to seek exemption through a process to be determined. i think the first thing to mention to set the stage is the continuing message here at the heritage foundation about this issue, and that is section 232 is not the proper measure to be utilized. the administration has time and time again said that china is the issue with steel, russia is the issue with steel. these tariffs will not do much, if anything, to impact our imports from china. 2% of all u.s. steel imports come from china. that is a statistic from 2016. that number has decreased significantly over the last five to six years because of

countervailing duties that have all but cut off imports of steel from china. what is really going to happen for, despite the exemptions canada and mexico, for canada and mexico, is a lot of impact on our closest trading partners, brazil for japan, then and on. purposewhat we -- the at the heritage foundation today is to continue to reiterate the position of example, korea, this institution on this issue, and on the issue of tariffs overall. the duty of the heritage foundation is to provide a true north for capitol hill in the white house. north is driven by our mission to build an america where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish. economic freedom is a large part

of that. our that, i will leave lovely experts on the panel discussed the issue further. is the president of a trade and economic consulting ,irm she started in 1991 she forms with dr. joseph francois -- did i pronounce that right? [laughter] baughman has been an economist since 1997. she follows closely the impact of trade programs in the u.s. economy economist and trade flo. trading partners. the firm produces detailed economic assessments of these policies and programs based on traditional economic modeling. ms. baughman holds degrees from

columbia and georgetown university. following laura, our next panelist will be vanessa sciarra. names here.it with vice president of legal affairs at the foreign trade council, based international enterprises, representing all majorenterprises, representing l major sectors of the economy. her additional experience includes working in the private sector, mostsector, most recentw firm in their washington dc office. her law firm experience included a broad range of international trade matters in the pharmaceutical, medical devices, shipping and trucking sectors. she advised on economic sanctions compliance and illegal

dumping and countervailing suit cases. she appeared before the department of commerce, international trade commission, customs and border protection office, and the u.s. trade representative for an -- office of foreign assets control, fda, and consumer protection safety commission. quite the list of accolades. something to aspire to. prior to entering private iarra work in sca washington dc from a position of implementation of the north american free-trade agreement with dispute settlement obligations. she also served as legal counsel during the negotiation of the general agreement on trade in services, and participated in the drafting of the uruguay

round implementing bill. she was previously a trial attorney with the u.s. department of justice. in this position, she represented the u.s. government in anti-dumping and countervailing laws. she regularly briefed and argued cases before the u.s. court of international trade, international claims, and appeals to the federal circuit. earned her bachelor's degree in history from yale, her masters in economics and j.d. from earnedr bachelor's degree yale law school. please join me in welcoming our analysts. panelists.g our >> [applause] >> whatever you prefer. pleasureman: it is a to be here today to talk to you about this very important trade policy development. every minute it seems to change.

hopefully provide some information that is least current -- that is at least current as of today. when i first heard about the potential for these tariffs and the president's motivation for agree this was a agree this was a proposal of his coming from the heart. i can imagine it must be really hard to travel around the country throughout the campaign and see so many communities decimated, and unemployed workers and the hardship they are going through. anybody would care about that. anybody would want to do something about that. i genuinely think his motivation is good. the problem of course that he ha ve is there are many reasons someone can lose a job. sometimes it is in poor

competition. more often than not, it is shown to be things that don't have anything to do directly with imports. it is technology, productivity changes, changes in the economy, structural changes in the way of product is being received by customers. it's new epa rules on mileage economy -- it is a host of other things that cause an industry's need to shift to changes in consumer demand. it is so much easier for politicians to point to foreigners as the cause of all of our ills, and import protection as the solution. weight easier than it is to say, i'll take away your technology so you can have a job again. who wants to do that? we learned back when the bush administration put tariffs on

2000 andf steel in 2001 -- we learned then that there can be some serious unintended consequences when you attempt to 2000 and limit impora trade barrier. in that case it was tariffs. we worked very closely back then with a coalition of steel consuming industries, most of them manufacturers. all of them were saying, this is killing us. many were saying, we are laying off workers. it was very clear from that experience that people did lo se jobs in other industries when tariffs were put on imports of steel. there are unintended consequences associated with import penetration. when i read the commerce there aredepartment's 232 reporn in particular, i was

impressed in two ways as an economist. first, i saw there really was an effort to do some economic modeling on what the tariffs ought to be, and what effect it would have on producers. they used something called a equilibrium model, which is a fancy complicated model that the international trade commission uses, and a whole host of u.s. government and trade organizations use to analyze the effects of a given trait policy. for example, the effects of a trade agreement with korea, they used this model. in this case, the instructions were, what should the tariff rate be to get u.s. manufacturers at 30% utilization? they report in the 232 report, these tariffs will reduce imports to allow u.s. production

to go up and utilization capacity to hit 80%. bravo. they did some serious thinking on this. know these models generate a whole lot of other information. what is the effect of this on gdp? what is the impact on prices? what is the impact on other sectors of the economy, not just the steel industry? i was looking for information. that was not there. alarm bells went off that the president was not resented -- was not presented with the full picture. yes, it would save steel jobs, but the cost, if any, was not in the report. there is no information in the report about what effect the tariffs would have on jobs. we thought we need to get this information to the white house before he makes a decision.

it is important to have the full picture of what these tariffs could do. we used the same model that the commerce department used. we imposed tariffs on imports of 25% and 10%, steel and aluminum. we model calculated the full range of the effects. we drilled down to look at the job effects, not just on the steel industry, where indeed we found there would be increases in employment. 33,000 jobs would be gained in the steel and aluminum industry combined. we also found a whole heck of a lot of other jobs would be lost. as costs go up, steel consuming industries get less competitive. they have to cut costs somewhere to stay competitive. they might cut wages.

they might reduce investment. they might cut workers. so there is a range of things they can do to try to stay competitive. all these things we know they tried to do back in 2001. job losses are one of those effects. the models to us there would be -- told us there would be nearly 13,000 jobs lost in fabricating industries, 5000 lost in the motor vehicle sector, another 2000 and other transportation sectors. on match for manufacturing as a whole, -3000 jobs. that includes the pluses to the steel industry and minuses to other industries. it is a net hit to manufacturing. it does not stop there. has ramifications for instruction. workers do not go out to dinners anymore. service sectors have to retrench

a little. they feel the negative impact. overall, the model is telling us we are looking at 179,000 job losses. we came up with a net loss our membership is not represent any of this deal and aluminum producers, so we as a convener of many companies who are using steel and aluminum in the industry. we were approached by many of our members and we recently formed an alliance that is

composed of two categories, basically, steel and aluminum consuming industries. also, parties that would be hurt or the retaliation. we will talk about that in a minute. in the study, she is very clear, they did not model the effects of the retaliation in their study, so we can talk about that a little bit. history teaches us that the primary sector that feels the pinch of retaliation is agriculture. of agricultural, ready and associations in our alliance. -- there are no companies at this point, we thought that was the best way to present our views, composed by those of us who are in the business associations and industries that are represented. what we are doing is working very hard. block the tariffs

from being enacted, but we lost about battle. but, wars are won by b numerous battles. our ultimate role is to get them to be rolled back. history teaches us -- the bush tariffs were only in effect for 18 months. we are hopeful and we hope it will not be a huge drag our members. in terms of how this tariff looks to us right now, they are worth looking at. i assume everybody has seen the proclamations, they were made public last night at the white house. for those who haven't looked at

them, they are worth looking at. there are's all sorts of hidden information that the president did not articulate when he was doing his overview. to makehat i would make sure that we are on the same page and what is going on, these are tariffs of an indefinite time frame. there is no time limit in the proclamations. there is an undertaking by the president. to look at the effects of the tariffs from time to time, that is the first bit of information. so they could be there for my sometime absent some action by the hill. tha't is the first bit of information. the scope is very broad. if you are interested in understanding the scope on the second and third pages of the proclamation, there are some numbers that are affected. this is mostly primary but there are some secondary effects. just because of the way aluminum

is fabricated. there is some sort of secondary materials that are captured. if you need them for your business or your association, if you need the numbers, that is the second tip that i would leave you with. with respect to canada and mexico, the proclamation says they are being given additional time to explain how they are going to contribute to national rhetoric obviously the that is introduced by the administration is that this is tied to the nafta negotiations. having been in mexico recently i will tell you that things are not going swimmingly well on that. we will see how that lays out in april. ,here will be around in april industry capitals in washington hosting. the next round that sort of fits with the 30 day timeframe that we heard, as some sort of implicit timeframe that they are

working with, but it is not in the proclamation as being clear. it appears to be part of their thinking. that is also one of the ambassadors thinking with nafta, because they are going to run out of time if they want to submitted for this congress. there is a natural timeframe here at the end of april where things have to reach a point with nafta. just because of the way the calendar falls this year. i would say, if you are canada and mexico watcher, keep your eye on that bald. mid april to late april. with respect to other allies, it is begging time. the order does not really explain the process i was people can come in and explain how they are going to deal -- offer to assist the administration was dealing with these national security threats area make of that what you will. ambassador light has or will be conducting those investigations.

i suspect that it will not just be security issues on the table. it sounds to me more like -- you have a nice steel industry there, let me tell you how you can make it better. i think our allies are justifiably concerned. we know that australia, the united kingdom, japan, they are the first ones in the door, and they feel like they have the strongest arguments. on the security side. there are products that are not made in this country and could this countryn without significant changes to the way that we produce aluminum. i think those countries are the first three to get in the door and probably the first through that will be prioritized. it is not clear from the order what it will to get an exemptio.

an exception is a term applied to countries. the last piece of the order exclusions. if you have any familiarity, this is a process which says my product is not going to be covered by the order. if you think about this process went in 2001, you went in and you claimed what your product was, the new explains why you theuct -- in this case, order does provide some guidance and says, you will be able to make an argument if the item is not produced in the u.s., either it is in sufficient quality, or it is not reasonably available. argueyou will be about to specific national security considerations. particularly for the folks in the procurement space of the

dod. if you have a product that the u.s. government regularly procures from you, and you want to preserve that. i will tell you, history tells us that the process is not an exact or fast process. i was not doing this in 2001, and i asked how many orders can be as rooted in the said it was over like 100,000 or something. and some are byproducts. that means that there is a process for about. within 10 days, we are some was to get guidance on how the process will run. i told companies, don't expect it to be quick. he will be with a lot of people who will all be rushing in at the them time and you will probably all have to file deposits. you will be putting money in the table and have to get it back. the government takes your money and says, we will see.

it is not particularly a speedy process, so you should advise your supply chain that that is coming. it matters what you get in the door on march 22. on the 23rd you will be paying these duties. there is a push to get contracts that were long-term and the water but as far as we knew none of those have been granted. the window shuts on march 22. there was a push by some people to get a grandfathering for contracts that were long-term, but apparently, as far as we know, those will be granted. so, the window shuts at midnight on march the -- march 22, and then they will be assessing the additional duties the next day. i think the bottom line is a lot of concern among our alliance members and membership. my last point is, what i have learned from talking to members of these alliances, there are a lot of's mall businesses who fabricate with aluminum and metal, a lot. they will not be able to nimbly jump to other sources of supplies.

say you are a big beverage manufacturer, or you probably can't jump and make a change. but, if you are a small fabricator in michigan or ohio and use foreign metal because it has been priced attractively to do that, though supply chains are basically going to be cut off 80's tariffs. you will have a hard time jumping to a new source. unfortunately, in addition to the consumer in fact, it is going to be regressed event hit people who buy food in a low income levels the hardest. people who buy cars, but unfortunately, small businesses will suffer the most. big companies will be able to do that because their relationships for supply are deeper and they will have more market base relationships with other countries.

that gives you basic information. >> i was writing down multiple questions. thank you so much for your comments, they are insightful and the help to get our minds in the realm of not only what happens, but also what are the ramifications. many of those ramifications are still unknown and will remain unknown for some time. as the daughter of a small business owner, my dad went to school in michigan -- this really hits home for me. it hits home for my family and all the businesses that my dad works with. i think that putting that in the perspective of small to medium-sized businesses, the largest employers are the movers and shakers when it comes to growing the economy and creating jobs.

honestly, vanessa, i could listen to you speak all day long. you should come to teach a class at george mason whenever you like. wanted to comes to [laughter] teach a class, so maybe. >> i'm going to start things off with one technical question. you mention exclusion process and some of the exemption possibilities by america when it comes to not available and reasonable quantity, not made here -- one thing i noticed .issing was price there is no indication -- correct me if i am wrong -- no indication of this is going to increase the price of your by maybe 50% or 60%? not listed in this

is going to increase the price. problem will be a huge for small businesses, because it will not be easily able to switch their supply. we are also going to suffer in our export ability, if you are making a product in japan and you can make it with cheaper steel than we can, you will be more competitive when you sell it to vietnam or china. so, we are not only hurting our the proclamation did not cover retaliation or export losses for example. you did the math on export losses but not the product losses. >> yes, we did. the ability of foreign product will underprice us because it is a very competitive market. this, one inknow every four acres of u.s. agriculture products is for export. that is a great concern for people who may be subject to

retaliation for example, or even our companies that are having fabricated metals. for them to be able to compete with our foreign competitors. i think the ramifications of this, this is definitely the pebble in the pond that has a lot of ripples. the more you think about it, the more you start to realize how interconnected we are can have all of these affects across the u.s. and in our markets, where we are competitive and selling the u.s.-produced products. i think that autos are a great example of that. the autos are very price -sensitive. the steel and aluminum that goes into autos will be more expensive and it will make the u.s. production of cars more expensive when we try to sell them abroad.

the steel and aluminum that goes into autos will be more expensive and i will make the car is more expensive when they go abroad. they are filling up the middle because they are the center of nafta and now they are going to get hit hard on this as well. every time i hear them talk about it, i realized that they just realize, wow. they feel, why me. there is a lot of concern of how the auto industry will weather this. >> i think, vanessa, you lead to perfectly into my next question. that has to do with the reactions from the administration on these price increases. i am sure everyone saw this past week, secretary ross on business with his campbell soup can saying, the price of the can will only be increased by about one penny or 1.5 pennies.

that is not a big deal, who would not be ok with paying 1.5 cents more? but that adds up. i would like to hear your reaction to how the administration is responding to these price increases. do you feel like they are a little bit out of touch, with what those price increases could be when they add up for americans? i would love to hear your thoughts. a i do think that they are mischaracterization, the real cost of those price increases. when you look at it at the retail level, it looks small for certain products. as i was indicating earlier, most of the job losses that we are seeing are at that little level of the value chain. -- the middle level of the value chain. it is the company that makes missionary,ire and

they are going to see much bigger price increases relative to the can of soup. you are not going to see that because, who goes to ace hardware store to buy a screw? buy airot going to conditioning the goes into a construction project. so, those price increases are going to be bigger and it will be hidden from most average people. the other thing, you may have seen that wilbur ross put out an editorial this morning and one of the things he says is -- all the price increases will not be that big, they will amount to for a car for example, four dollars a month more for the monthly payment of a car. and who wouldn't pay four dollars a month more to save a steel job? well, he does not mention anything about jobs? i would counter that the person

who lost his job might have a problem paying four dollars a month more for that car. so, they are ignoring the holes wide of the discussion. of thewhole side discussion. he ignored it in his report to the president. it is troubling. add to laura's story. there are also decisions made everyday by companies about structural changes in the business. for example, if you are beverage manufacturer and you can choose between building a new aluminum canning line which is a pretty big investment or going plastic, there is a point in time we have to make that decision. and you are not dictated by outside forces, your business is growing and you need to bottle more bottles. , right? you need to make a decision. strategico make a decision about planning for the future. what do you choose? this is a decision that has an

impact on the company for the next five to 10 years. but now, we know that someone may choose elastic over aluminum. that has ramifications all up and down the supply chain. if you choose plastic, your supply sources are going to be different than where you source aluminum jobs. that decision is being made in the context of all of this uncertainty. business people are rational for the most part, so they will make decisions that they can feel more comfortable. there will be decisions made to delay projects, to choose to go with plastics versus metals, decisions to halt certain construction products. we are hearing about all sorts of deadlines that are being pushed because no one is sure with a -- sure whether they want to purchase aluminum or not. those are decisions that are being made in that strategic sense and we are not capturing that harm as well. he is not recognizing that when he talks about the soup can, he is missing the part of the business where they are basing decisions on market uncertainty. metals are looking less

attractive right now, so people are going to have to figure out how to try to hedge for that. >> those are all great points. my last question, then i will open it up to the audience. one thing we have been talking about at the heritage foundation congress do? i think this is the next question on everyone's mind. why doesn't congress have a role in this process? they essentially wrote themselves out of the process -- >> they are delegator's. s. they are great delegator at heritage, ways to reinsert congressional authority. we have been talking about that. section, with changing 302, section 301. senator mike lee has a bill associated with this which would require a joint resolution by congress, if the president wants to increase tariffs.

beener option we have discussing here at heritage is appropriations. institutions that would actually implement and collect tariffs and prevent them from using funds to do those processes. what do you think about those options? what sorts of other mechanisms do you think that congress has to do more than write a strongly worded letter? vanessa: there has been a strong congressional reaction. interestingly enough, not only from the republicans come but also from the democrats. schumer put up statements -- everyone understands that we have a problem in the structural economy with employment and manufacturing. the overall feeling is that this is not how you were some was to do it. the chinese are not feeling any pain today at all. interestingly enough, they are

probably feeling work pain from the tpp announcement yesterday. i would be way more horrid about that than it would you worried about tariffs at the moment. i guess i will quickly run through my thoughts. senator flake introduced a bill. there is another bill in the house. anything that you introduce has to be veto-proof. there has been a lot of discussion on the hill him away from the business community and with people like you all about things that we could do. there was a general recognition that with nafta, that there is a balancing struck between the congress and the president. president has our on foreign affairs, congress has power on trade. that has always been awkwardly

managed. so, i think that the question of what to do is on a lot of minds of a lot of good people. i wish there was a simple way to answer this problem. ustorically, history tells that congress is a protector of provincial interest, and the president is usually the visionary. congress tends to be more worried about protecting the jurisdictions and constituencies and seen as the institution that does that. we may be in a situation historically, where we are flipping that and we have to figure out how to grab some of that power back from the president. it will not go very well with the white house lawyers, but there was definitely discussion on how to do that. i do not think constitutional

law professors are any happier. -- two lawyers in a room that have any interest in that, and becomes hours of conversation while our spouses look at us. we have lots of conversation about this all the time. i anchor and anyone who is interested in this field to dive in. us gete minds will help out of this. i think there will be hearings. representative kind and meeks -- larson just requested representative himes and representative meeks and representative larson have requested hearings. we may be getting to a flurry of hearings. i would say that that is probably needed. there has been a shocking lack olderreholder and take discussion between the administration and the business community. there has been a lot of

discussion with the unions, and i understand that constituency matters. i applaud the administration on meeting with him, but if you only sit on one side of the table, you only have one view. very welcoming a administration for meeting with business, and i feel it that is part of the problem. we are not getting to say our --piece. they do not talk to us much. that is another piece. yesterday was the beginning of a long discussion and a lot of, -- get ready for this to be on the front page of the post. it has been on the front page of the post for the past two weeks, it will not go away. north korea will be there, but this is going to be there. the last point i would make is really incumbent for all of us to try to stress to the administration that china is a

huge problem, i will tell you that when i talk with my business members, every single company will tell you, china is the highest thing on their list in terms of country of concern. of steel and aluminum, but also because it is so hard to do business there, even though it is such an attractive market. you want to be there, but you don't want to be there. the trend we are seeing with that they are moving back on all the reforms that had said they were going to do. the current administration does not seem to be inclined to helping the u.s. companies and do business there, so i think we have to figure out how to engage our allies in an effective way. afraid, this is not the greatest way to open the door for that discussion, but those of us who are not in government, have a lot of ways to talk to those friends in other cap capitals. encourage discussion with the europeans, japanese and australians about how we can constrain the chinese with

collective action. it does work overtime with countries who work overtime to constrain bad actors, eventually they are able to do that. i really think that is going to be the key to this. there is a weird collective action in these proclamations. it is like, come in and tell us how you're going to get out of this bad thing we are doing to you. i was thinking about this, and it is kind of an invitation to talk about the solution that is multilateral, but also a weird way to start a conversation, right? i think because of the way countries diplomatically have to be seen by their domestic side, people are not going to welcome that. when this came out, the individual announcement, we were in mexico. the mexicans looked at us and they were like, what are we going to do now? now there is no private diplomacy, now you are just telling everybody that we have to come in and bag. they are in the middle of a difficult election cycle. -- come in and beg.

the conversation is getting drowned out by those who say -- see, they are always going to make us offer. that is the american way, to make their southern partners suffer. -- suffer. my point is to those who engage in these conversations, you are -- you have never been needed more. we have got to engage with our partners. we have to work outside the government, let us do it area let us make this a need, come up with a solution to the chinese problem, as i need among partners, not just a problem. says -- i do not think we can solve this problem just by the u.s. saying that you will be's oh and the chinese will suddenly come to the realization that they are going to fix problems. it is not going to happen. multilateralism works.

host: absolutely. anything? [laughter] >> no, i am going to take notes! host: with that, i'm going to open the floor for questions. please wait for the microphone and announce your name and affiliation. please make your question a question. speaker down thank you, my name is brian reilly, from the national taxpayers union. thanks to heritage for having this timely event. i wanted to repeat something you said and make sure i understand it correctly this is not an . issue where the commerce department proposed tariffs and you went out and ran a model and came up with maybe different results than what they did. if i understand you correctly, they ran the same model, came up with them a result and covered up the parts that they did not like, only telling half the story, or less.

those are my words, i am asking if you have a comment on that? vanessa: all that they reported was the effect on this deal industry area and laura: they did not report the effects on everybody else area and we wanted to get that into the discussion. speaker do i am from the pakistani spectator. the question is, many democrats think that this is just a kind of political stunt, that it will not have any long-term effects. sanctioning these tariffs on european and especially on chinese products -- do you agree that trump is trying to please or appease the people who are diehard fans of him? there is really not much substance, because he is going to say ok, we are taking canada and mexico out, and we are react

relaxing -- we are relaxing this tariff on this or that country. i ask because a couple of years --, dr. ross was invited, they are a good couple -- but i wilbur ross is very docile, you feel it he is about to fall asleep while peter navarro would not let you talk. they know these things very well. i don't think he knows that it is going to make a difference, because at the end, everybody would be happy as long as the people who voted for trump are happy. do you believe that it is just a political game? thank you.

guest: all trade is political. trade is highly politicized in this administration. there may be an element of deepics, and i the recesses of their mind, that this is sustainable long-term. you have to work with what you have. proclamations says it is effectively indefinite. regardless of this lasts for 12 months are five years, businesses do not make decisions just about tomorrow, they make decisions about six to nine months down the line. so for example, and lauren can tell you more about this, the spot price on steel and aluminum, i do understand that

the prices have been trending up for a month now and we can expect that once the tariffs are in place, there's a certain amount of price increase that will happen. sort of like a renter to that will be achieved and captured by those who can benefit from that. economists will tell you that the prices will go up because there is room to do so. regardless -- the matter how long it lasts, practically speaking, even for these exempt an exemptions and inclusion is to be put in place, it is going to take about six months weird that is going to have ramifications. going to have an effect on business people who have to make choices. it is not true that you can just do these things and remove them. even if your ultimate goal is to have a certain amount of political theater, you have an actual impact on businesses and on companies. once a company lays off a worker

, i am told it is not just a matter of changing your mind and having the person back area and there are decisions made, and ramifications to that. right? add,e only thing i would -- i don't know or ever talk to the president, but everything i read suggest that deep down, he really believes this stuff. it is not politics, to him. >> [inaudible] they have a boss who is demanding action for reasons that he does not think is political. that thisit is hard stuff is horrible and import-protection will fix it. and he has hit her in a barrel telling him, yeah, go for it. tellings peter navarro

him yeah, go for it. andakes it complicated tough to present a rational case to anybody who works for this administration. here is a horrible thing that will happen if you do x. welcome, i have my boss telling me to do x. we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. >> it is difficult to have those conversations. especially with career people because they are being told. our action was, this is where you set this capacity, you work backwards, and you do not look at any of the effects. i do not fault the people who wrote the report. this is the information i do not want and this is what it should look like -- and that is exactly what the report looked like. it is out of they are not capable people working at the agencies. i am totally in love and i think the people work so hard but i think there is a top-down direction that is not allowing

for policy discussion. it is direction that is being top-down, you're going to do it their way that i want it to be done. have time forwe maybe one or two more questions. >> hey, trade policy counsel at the institute. one of the things i have noticed from the white house's rhetoric is that they keep talking about this issue of chinese friendship and steel. without acknowledging that we gave anti-circumvention tools to the executive branch a couple of years ago. i guess the question that i want to ask is, do we have a sense for how pervasive that issue is? all steel in% of the u.s. is from china, that is what the figures show from commerce. but do we have a sense on how

pervasive this is, trying to skirt anti-dumping duties? >> to those people who don't know what it means, it means when you take chinese steel and you move it to vietnam. you do it in a minor way but just enough to change tariff codes and then you bring it to the u.s. and you avoid tariffs because it is not captured in those codes. it had seen this. the chinese are very good at this, and very good at telling their affiliates in asian countries, how to do it. ae answer is that it is problem and has been a problem for the steel industry particularly. the aluminum industry has had their mother problems of mexico. senator choco office will tell you that they have tried very hard to deal with it. at the end of the day, tracing these commodities is very hard.

things don't leave china with a chineseat says, i am steel. the reality is that people want to be evasive and they can find ways to do that. the chinese have developed it into an art form, almost. be thatnt on that would i think that is why some countries will not get exemptions. the administration has been cagey about that, and i don't think those countries want to talk about that, but i think it is ready clear if you follow any anti-dumping discussions, that there is some sort of entrenchment between korea, taiwan, thailand. those countries will have a hard time arguing their case to the administration, which i think is way career has been quiet over 24 hours. other countries such as eu k, australia, japan, those in a countries will have a history of having this problem. the administration will say, we believe you and we don't have any evidence of that.

the countries who have issues with this are the u.s. steel and aluminum producers. those are not countries that have a history of transshipment problems and they will be able to go in with a straight face, we do not have this is a problem and the immigration will say, we believe you. the country that really keep track of this are the u.s. steel and aluminum producers. they have people on their staff who look for transshipment. one assumes that information will get frontals of the administration and i'll be on the table when they destined people come in and say, i want an exemption. host: last question there in the back. >> henry hector, retired government. you have not mentioned the recycling industry of aluminum or steel. 30 years ago or so they mentioned that u.s. steel moved overseas or sold out, the

recycling would replace the losses that were produced totially, they would be of a recycle it still. how would this work? would it increase as far as a mother the reduction, or would we still be importing aluminum? i read in the newspaper that aluminum was still being imported. it did not say whether with -- it did not say whether it was ore, or aluminum products. the number of products produced continues to increase here let alone in china. how about recycling, will this have much impact on the problem and the tariffs? >> we can do all the questions together. would be, isstion there a potential that this actually could provide some sort of solution, if you look at it from the extreme point of view. is there potential at least for short-term adjustment that could provide him in a fit and

stimulus to american industry? >> would you like to talk about haveling, or? works i talked to a couple of companies who are in the recycling business. the good news is that we are much better country at recycling, we have all sort of learned to recycle. it is not true in every community across america, but certainly in urban areas for example, and areas where you have densely-populated people with garbage, people have learned to do it. the problem with recycled product is and is not suitable for every use. so, where as you can use it for something, you cannot use it for example to build oil pipelines or electrical grade steel. these are uses that have industrial constraints on it, and recycled product gets impure overtime. i think the reality is that we will still be a net importer of

aluminum and is he'll even after the tariffs go into effect. in some cases, the user will premium, they will just say, i can observe the premium, i need the product. because the recycled steel or aluminum is only useful in certain cases, it will not completely erase imports. the other issue you raised -- i think the president does care about these people. i believe there are huge problems in steel country. we need to find ways to help people who do not see that they have options and job opportunities. find ways to sort of provide a pathway for them. interestingly enough, steel jobs are not as many as you would think. 20 years ago, if you looked at them, they were very labor intensive. you would think about a line of workers, right? now, youty is that have one guy at the end of the

line who works in a control room. modern steel and aluminum fabrication is done by robots and missionary, where we are all headed in terms of the fabrication area and we would want to be the top companies using technology. so, even though there is an protection provided by the tariffs, the re-investments are hugely expensive and they are not labor-intensive. relative to what the old steel and aluminum production was like. that is a problem for the aluminum and steel companies, because this reduction will only be two or three years in length, not a lot of production if you are going to build a new 21st century plant. this is not necessarily help them with that problem. it helps them in the short-term, clearly they will get some money out of this because of the right -- the rent issue that we just discussed. whether it will give them enough money to build out another 21st century plant or a smelting

operation, that is really competitive with the ones that we see in asia, time will tell. laura did a study in 2002 and data when you did that study to work with, and it's sad -- this is what happened. afear that we will be doing similar study two years from now, and i feel that the results will be the same. basically, global tariffs as a solution to global structural problems is not the best solution to the problem. it does not make your point in a valid, it just means that we need to come up with better ways to address these problems. we need to be creative people who say, what about this, what about that? go to the white house and press our point. laura: i would just add that we need to be very clear about what the cause of the problem is. foreigners,o blame but in this instance and in many other instances, that is not the

biggest reason why we have unemployment, hollowed out factories, depressions in many common it is in the midwest. -- in the rust belt. the commerce department -- an analysis, as well as ours, showed that as the economy as a whole, it would be a decline in gdp resulting from the tariffs. it, heross acknowledged never put it in writing or anything, but he said it was "negligible." well, it is still there is negative. something wrong with that solution to the problem. and we need to look elsewhere. host: thank you so much. please join me in thanking our fantastic panel on the discussion here today. [laughter] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.

visit ncicap.org] announcer: on it newsmakers this weekend, david mcintosh is our guest. he talks about the conservative groups role in the upcoming elections. he will also be asked about the presidents recent decision to impose new tariffs on steel and aluminum. at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. eastern here on c-span. monday on c-span's landmark case, we explore the 1886 where a san francisco city ordinance discriminated against a chinese laundromat corner. the ruling written by associate justice stanley matthews found

in his favor and established equal protection under the 14th amendment applied to immigrants as well as citizens. examine this case with the professor of asian-american studies and history at columbia university and author of "the lucky ones." josh blackman also, associate law professor of the texas college of law and houston, and president of the harlan institute. watch live on monday at 9:00 eastern on c-span, c-span.org or listen with the free c-span radio app. order your copy of the landmark cases companion book available for $8.95 less shipping and handling at c-span.org/landmark cases. ♪ announcer: