President Donald Trump will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports next week in order to ensure that "we're doing everything we can to protect American workers," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.
"The president is concerned about the men and women of this country who have been forgotten about, the industries that our country was founded and built on," Sanders told reporters at the daily briefing.
"This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody," she added. "This is something, frankly, the president has been talking about for decades."
Trump told steel and aluminum executives in a White House meeting that he would announce penalties of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports.
The tariffs, he said, would remain for "a long period of time."
"What's been allowed to go on for decades is disgraceful," the president said in the Cabinet Room. "It's disgraceful.
"You will have protection for the first time in a long while and you're going to regrow your industries."
No details were disclosed, either by Trump or Sanders, and the announcement sent Wall Street stocks plunging out of fears of a possible trade war.
Sanders said specifics would come when Trump signed any executive action next week.
"This isn't something that he has shied away from or something that he hasn't spoken about regularly and often — or something that he will stop talking about at any point soon," she said.
"These are conversations that the president has been having for a long time," Sanders continued. "He has made his intentions very clear to the team at the White House.
"I don't think it came as a surprise to anybody here."
The press secretary also slammed Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who has long opposed Trump, for attacking the duties as "a massive tax increase on American families."
"I don't know that the president will or should ever apologize for protecting American workers," Sanders retorted, "and certainly not to Sen. Sasse."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.