Trump's steel import move aimed at placating electoral base?

EARLY this month, a big sigh of relief was heard around the world, after US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping concluded their meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

 Candidate Trump's China-bashing rhetoric during the election campaign and his pledge to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese goods raised the spectre of Sino-American trade wars that could halt the American economic recovery and devastate the global economy. But overall, the Mar-a-Lago summit ended on a positive note. In addition to the good personal chemistry between the two leaders, Mr Trump made it clear that he wanted to avoid a confrontation with Beijing, especially at a time when Washington needed Chinese cooperation in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. The good news from Mar-a-Lago was followed by the White House's decision not to designate China a "currency manipulator", a clear reversal of Mr Trump's earlier promise, which brought about another YUGE global sigh of relief. Was the economic nationalist of the campaign re-born as a globalist in the Oval Office?

Well, it now looks like the luminaries at Davos would need to wait a while before they pop the champagne corks at their next annual gathering. Protectionism raised its ugly head at the White House last week when Mr Trump announced that his administration was opening a major probe into whether to curb steel imports. The Trump administration intends to use a 1962 law that provided the US government with the authority to limit imports that pose risks to national security, and which was invoked several times in the 1970s and the 1980s as an excuse to restrict the import of various industrial products.