Bipartisan senators demand watchdog investigation into exclusions for Trump's tariffs

Source: Washington Examiner | November 26, 2018 | Sean Higgins

>A trio of senators on Monday demanded a Government Accountability Office investigation into the Trump administration’s system for awarding exemptions to President Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, citing fears about the fairness of the process.

“[T]he Senate Finance Committee and industry groups have called on Commerce to clarify the criteria it uses to determine whether to grant an exclusion from the tariffs,” wrote Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Tom Carper, D-Del., and Doug Jones, D-Ala., in a letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro.

The senators argued that the process for granting tariffs exemptions is unfair to the business community, saying that some businesses are worried about the backlog of requests for breaks and that some small businesses are struggling with red tape.

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As of Nov. 12, 48,602 steel and 6,504 aluminum exclusion requests have been filed, according to the department. Of those, it has approved 12,356 requests regarding steel, or about one-in-four. It has approved about 830 ones for aluminum, or about one-in-eight. The Commerce Department currently has an estimated 100 staffers and contractors working on processing exclusion requests, according to information provided to the Washington Examiner by the administration. The process has been slow due to the fact that the tariffs are new and the department previously never had to deal with such requests.

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