Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) and Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander introduced the Automotive Jobs Act of 2018 on Wednesday, in an attempt to stymie President Trump’s auto tariffs.
The bipartisan legislation would require the International Trade Commission (ITC) to conduct a comprehensive study on the well-being, health and vitality of the United States automotive industry before any tariffs could be applied to goods.
“I share President Trump’s desire to see continued growth in our manufacturing sectors and to secure trade deals that benefit our country, but his tariffs are not leading to more manufacturing jobs in Alabama,” Jones said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday.
“Instead, they have manufactured a crisis that threatens to permanently harm our businesses and our farms,” he said.
The ITC would have to include in that report, among other things, details on how tariffs affect automotive manufacturing costs and how that impacts the industry’s jobs in the United States.
The Jones-Alexander tariff fighting partnership goes back to at least early June when the two senators wrote a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross – through whose agency the tariffs are carried out – urging him to reconsider.
Both Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama Secretary of Commerce Greg Canfield have expressed concerns about the tariffs’ effect on the state’s automotive industry.
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