Michigan and Ohio House Dems Slam Auto Tariffs and Canadian Border Tariffs
Auto companies are feeling like they're being yanked around with ever-changing tariffs, said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who was a senior public affairs executive at GM before becoming a politician. "Every business, whether small business or large business, needs certainty," she said, but instead, lawyers are scrambling to figure out what the impact is of the changing tariffs. She said she has talked to lawyers every day since this began.
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"I don't care who you are. You don't want to be a ping pong ball in all of this," she said April 30 at a press conference at the Capitol. "The companies just want to get about doing their jobs."
Dingell, fellow Michigan Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens and Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, spoke about tariff chaos and the drag on their states' economies both as a result of auto tariffs and tariffs on Canadian imports imposed earlier in the year.
Dingell said she agrees with Trump in that she wants to keep manufacturing cars domestically, but said, "the manner in which the tariffs have been done in the last 100 days has created nothing but uncertainty and chaos."
She said she thinks "NAFTA was the worst trade policy ever," and she's unhappy that so much auto production went to Mexico. But the companies now have plants there. "You've got to have time to readjust. And you got to understand what the rules of the road are. And nobody does."
She said that there is some excess capacity at domestic plants that automakers may be able to shift work to, in order to avoid 25% tariffs on vehicles made in other countries. But, she said, you can't open a new assembly plant overnight.
"If everything goes right, it's two and a half to three years, and when's the last time everything went right?" She also said she agreed with Trump that the USMCA needs to be renegotiated. "I want to work with the president on that, and I would not treat Canada the same as Mexico. Canada would never let a Chinese plant build in Canada and market itself as an American vehicle, and that's one of the things that we have to discuss."
Kaptur also emphasized that auto manufacturing jobs going to low-wage countries like Mexico is different than auto industry integration with Canada. She said, "Congress had no role in advising the president on this drastic, radical tariff regime. It is an extreme approach that has led to predictable retaliation and anger from our friend and ally north of us, the nation of Canada."
Kaptur said she supports the bill introduced by all the Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, which would end the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico over border issues, end the reciprocal tariffs, and require congressional approval for tariffs imposed under sections 301 and 232, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act -- in fact, all executive tariffs other than safeguards and antidumping and countervailing duties.
Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, brought up that bill as she issued a statement on April 30 reacting to the first-quarter drop in GDP. "President Trump inherited a strong, growing economy that was the envy of the world. But in just 100 days, his reckless trade policies have sent our economy spiraling downward, and we’re now staring at the very real threat of yet another Republican-led recession," she wrote.
Kaptur told reporters that she first ran for Congress in 1982 because "our automotive industry was on its knees."
"We don't need any ill-considered, haphazard trade regimes to trip wire another job washout. We have lived through that, and we've worked hard to rebuild the economy of our region," she said.
Kaptur said her mother retired from Champion Spark Plug (which still makes spark plugs in Ohio, but not in Toledo) and her father retired from Jeep, and she worked on the line at Jeep during college. "So I have strong feelings about this."
Kaptur also touched on the 25% tariffs on imported aluminum and the 10% tariffs on potash, which importers may be able to avoid if producers certify under USMCA.
"I have a lot more to say about how much the price of vehicles has gone up, how much the price of potash is going up, what's happened to the aluminum trade? I can't get into every segment of this, but the point is, our supply chains cannot handle flip-flopping from day to day," she said. "His administration does not understand supply chains, and obviously they have no appreciation for Canada, for reasons I don't understand."
Stevens like Dingell, said tariffs on China are needed. Stevens, who serves on the House Select Committee on China, said that all Great Lakes members are "sick of China coming in and illegal dumping and currency manipulation. We need to level the playing field."
But she said Canada is a key trading partner, and we shouldn't be cutting ourselves off from importing from Canada and exporting to Canada.
She said Trump's tariff policies change "by the minute. It's driving people crazy."
Stevens said she remembers in 2009, she was chief of staff for Steve Rattner, who worked to negotiate a corporate restructuring for GM and Chrysler, so they didn't go bankrupt as a result of the financial crisis. She said Michiganders would call her that year, "grown men and women breaking down on the phone with me, after everything they've been through over decades of de-industrialization and people not standing up for our manufacturing economy." She said they were scared they would lose their jobs, or their businesses, "and now it's the same uncertainty when we're back home."