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Administration officials also suggested senators delay their fight against the national-security tariffs imposed on Canada and others until then, which he said suggests the trade machinations are largely political.

“It’s not just an abuse of power … it’s also, I know, offensive to the Canadian people,” Corker told the National Post later about the steel tariffs.

“I don’t think this administration understands how fortunate we are to have the neighbours we have,” he said. “To be sticking a stick in the eye of our closest friends and abusing authorities, and maybe doing it for political purposes, is offensive to those of us here (too).”

Much of the hearing focused on the national-security tariffs, which the president was allowed to impose without Congress’s usual say over trade measures. Young, a Republican from Indiana, noted the only time section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act was wielded before this year was to ban oil imports from Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution and from Libya in 1982 because of its support of terrorism.

“From a foreign policy perspective,” said Young, “I see an important distinction between 1979 Iran and Canada today.”

The first witness at the hearing was Manisha Singh, a career State Department official whom one senator suggested had been dispatched as “cannon fodder.”

She grimly fielded a barrage of mostly hostile questions, arguing the national-security tariffs were not meant to target any one nation, but to bolster a steel and aluminum sector that’s crucial to America’s defence.