There is a reason that such trade tools have not been used by the United States for decades.  Section 232 was first drafted in 1962 for use during the Cold War.  It joins a long line of dusty laws that allow an economic nationalist in the White House to do many deeply damaging things in trade.  Trump's Executive Order reviewing the "Buy American, Hire American" issued on April 17, 2017, fits within this overall mindset as well.  The sigh of relief over the relatively benign nature of the first 90 days in office from the Trump administration may be due to a lack of understanding of what is behind relatively anodyne sentences on the page.   The economic nationalists haven’t gone away.  They’ve maybe just gotten smarter at packaging.