The Commerce Department did brief Senate Finance Committee Republicans on the report’s findings last month, according to two senior GOP aides. But while the department’s briefer strongly suggested that the report contained a national security finding allowing Trump to impose tariffs, and said that it laid out several options for him, the emissary did not disclose the report’s rationale or detail those options.
The lack of information has frustrated lawmakers and trade groups. "This is a major policy decision that would have a significant impact on an industry that employs directly and indirectly 10 million Americans. If in fact this report is a secret plan to tax hard-working Americans, we ought to know about it. It’s as simple as that,” said John Bozzella, the president and CEO of Global Automakers Group and a former Chrysler executive.
“Every automaker would be impacted in some way, shape or form. If you just assume that we are declared a national security threat and the president imposes broad, sweeping import tariffs of 25 percent, then you would naturally see the prices of all of these cars increase in a range of $2,000 to $7,000,” said Jennifer Thomas, the vice president of federal government affairs at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the leading advocacy group for the auto industry.