Texas governor urges President Trump to scrap tariffs

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is urging President Donald Trump to rethink imposing steel and aluminum tariffs, worrying that doing so “may threaten future economic growth both in our state and across the country.”

In a letter Thursday to the president, Abbott said Texas imports more than twice the amount of aluminum and steel as any other state. He says nearly 500,000 Texans work in industries that use the metals, compared with around 7,600 directly employed producing them.

The governor wrote that the tariffs “could jeopardize the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Texans” and Americans working in the oil and gas industry.

He noted that “retaliatory” Chinese tariffs would also punish Texas because his state exported $8-plus billion in tariff-eligible goods to China last year, outpacing all other states.

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