Steelman · slot B
The compliance-leverage case
A pro-tariff industrial strategist would argue —The deal was simple: Europe lowers barriers, invests here, and builds here. Months later, the European Parliament has stalled, attached suspension clauses tied to unrelated disputes like Greenland, and major capitals — Berlin, Paris — are openly rejecting the steel and aluminum adjustments. Meanwhile German cars keep rolling into American ports under preferential terms we negotiated in good faith. Twenty-five percent on imported cars and trucks, with a clean carve-out for anything built in a US plant, is exactly the right instrument: it costs European exporters real money tomorrow, it costs American workers nothing, and it gives Brussels a concrete reason to stop slow-walking. The President said it plainly — build here, pay nothing. That is leverage used for its proper purpose.