Foreign trade security

Pretextual Protectionism? The Perils of Invoking the WTO National Security Exception

On Wednesday, Axios wrote a piece outlining how President Trump’s own statements could threaten his trade policy objectives: “President Trump wants to invoke a national security provision to stop the ‘dumping’ of cheap steel into America, but trade lawyers believe Trump's public statements —and dubious legal reasoning—could expose the administration to significant legal problems.”

Candidate Trump spent much of the 2016 campaign criticizing free trade and threatening to renegotiate international trade agreements or pull the U.S. out of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Now, as president, Trump has instructed the Commerce Department to investigate whether steel imports threaten national security and whether to invoke an obscure national security exception to circumvent the WTO’s restrictions on tariffs and nontariff barriers.