POLITICS JANUARY 9, 2019 / 3:26 PM / UPDATED 13 MINUTES AGO

Senate Finance chair says no to giving Trump more tariff authority

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said on Wednesday that Congress will not grant any expansion of President Donald Trump’s executive authority over tariff and other trade remedies.

“We ain’t going to give him any greater authority. We already gave him too much,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, told reporters in response to a Bloomberg report that the White House is preparing a bill that would seek to give Trump broad authority to levy new tariffs to break down other countries’ non-tariff trade barriers.

Grassley said that steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico were hurting farmers and “those have to go” in order to get agricultural interests to support congressional approval the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade deal.

Reporting by Chris Prentice and David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang