Obama: Tire tariffs not meant to be provocative or protective

In his speech at Federal Hall (across Wall Street from the NYSE), President Obama says the tariffs levied against Chinese tires are not meant to be provocative or protective.

They are not not meant to be, but the market clearly thinks they are both, and hearken back to the Smoot Hawley tariffs of the Depression era. They don’t seem to astute from a geopolitical point of view, given the debtor/creditor relation ship between China and the US. I felt that way about the Bush steel tariffs and feel the same way about these…