Unions praise Trump on steel tariffs

Here's where it gets tricky. Cheap imports are good for the global super rich and why they LOVE cheap foreign labor sweatshop products. It allows them to pull $$ out of the USA and pocket it.

The claim that the lower prices helps ordinary people is false, because NO accounting is made then for lost jobs, lost taxes, and higher government costs for unemployment/food stamps/welfare.

What Americans need is entry/low level jobs for unskilled and low skilled workers, that our critical industries are preserved whatever it takes, and better wages plus a return to full time employment rather than having to work multiple part time jobs.

Americans really don't need piles of cheap imported junk. Having a job or having a better paying job is superior than buying more cheap stuff. It is not just that massive imports eliminate American jobs, but also eliminate the tax base that comes with those jobs while at the same time costly the government massively for all the costs of unemployment and low paying jobs.

 

These figures are higher than the 24% tariff on steel and 7% tariff on aluminum that the Commerce Department recommended in a February 16 report. Reports indicated Trump was leaning toward 25% on steel because it is a "round number." ......snip~


http://www.businessinsider.com/trump...ade-war-2018-3

 

So, you have no answers.
What jobs, specifically are you wanting to bring back? Jobs that were lost 30 and 40 yrs ago? The industry has changed, and those jobs won't be coming back.
If you can be adult about this, then perhaps a discussion can continue.

 

It can be changed. In is notable that the Commerce Department recommended this and it is not due to some wild no-one-heard-of-this midnight tantrum Trump threw as one network reported it.

 

Since you choose to be a typical partisan hack in the discussion, here, chew on this.

Many steelworker jobs were lost during the unprecedented consolidation of the industry during the early 2000s, when more than 30 U.S. steelmakers went bankrupt. But the biggest issue facing employment at steel mills is automation, ArcelorMittal noted in its 2015 United States Integrated Report.


Technological improvements have enabled steelmakers to crank out more metal with far fewer workers.

"Steelmaking processes have transformed at a rapid pace, reflecting the industry’s improvement in operating practices and investment in state-of-the-art equipment to increase productivity," the report stated. "In 2015, one employee accounted for approximately 1,000 net tons of raw steel production, an increase of 20 percent."
http://www.nwitimes.com/business/st...cle_4ffd704a-1cdc-5eb9-82eb-0b858a369877.html

 

Think about what you are claiming. Are you really claiming that "the industry has changed" means the USA is forever unable to make steel and only other countries can? Why do you think that? Some genetic inferiority of Americans? The USA has virtually an unlimited supply of iron ore and coal. So why do you claim somehow the USA is incapable of producing steel? In fact, the USA does produce steel, but can not compete with price-fixed imports from foreign countries. As our ability to produce vanishes then those countries raise their prices - and we have to pay whatever they want. We can't just build a steel production factory overnight and all the infrastructure around it.

As Seth noted, the steel industry HAD to modernize and these are HUGE factories that then meant HUGE levels of bureaucratic permits to obtain - that take years and years to obtain. A company can not lose $$ for years and years waiting while government drags it out to justify their jobs or whatever other reasons. Warnings by steel producers that they will go broke if they are not allowed to modernize fell on deaf regulators ears. At the same time, importers price-fixed artificially low prices to break the steel industry as it waited for US government permission - and waited and waited. Finally going bankrupt. Of course, then the price of imported steel went up and no $$ was saved by Americans at all.

 

Leave it to the Alt left/illiberals to deny the reality of the Chinese dumping defective steel. While complaining about China's slave labor.

 

I would be closer to 100% on the side of this if the tax gains were used to help supplement recycling programs for steel and aluminum and drive down prices that way. I think Dems would be even more confused about defending or opposing this.

 

That's a tuff question to ask leftists.....requires them to do some studying into past history. Along with studying what other countries are currently doing. Not one of their strong suits. KnowWhatImean.

 

Wilbur Ross: Steel Tariff Will Add One Penny To Price Of A $2 Soup Can.....


Ross played down the economic negatives of the decision, saying: "First of all, let's put it in perspective. I just bought a can of Campbell's soup today at the 7/11. it was a $1.99 for the can. There's about 3 cents worth of steel in this can, so it goes up 25% that's a tiny fraction of one penny. That is not a noticeable thing."


Ross pulled the same prop, and more, in an interview the same morning on CNBC:....snip~


https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...l_add_one_penny_to_price_of_a_2_soup_can.html


Btw.....remind Wilbur not to shop at 7-11. He can get a the same can of soup for about 40cents cheaper at a real grocery store.

 

I realize that production jobs have been lost to automation. That doesn't mean that we just give up on our steel industry simply because other countries do it cheaper.

Assuming that there cannot be as many jobs in the industry as there used to be because of automation, what does the U.S. do about keeping a steel production industry going?

Nothing? Just let it die?

"Let It Die!" "Let It Die!" ... another campaign slogan. Yeah, that should be a winner.

 

There is not doubt the industry has changed.
Who said anything about the country not making steel? So far, just you.
Our defense industry uses about 90% of our own materials to make steel.

 

There is a partisan factor to this because there is a tendency of the Democratic Party to assert that heavy industry is evil and just asserts the economy will be ok without it. Drive around Cleveland near the dead US Steel factory and look at the neighborhoods. It is a true tragedy, very heart breaking.

That is the irony. While the Democratic Party RANTS against the super rich, in fact it is the super rich that profit from cheap imports, not the average person. What the average person gets out of it a permanent layoff - that then spreads to all the businesses those people bought from with their paychecks and all their employees lost their jobs too. With this, then the government collects no taxes from either the businesses nor employees - and instead is paying unemployment, food stamps and the rest. Unable to pay their mortgages, foreclosures hit the financial sector and, again, the government - which then smashes house prices and thus smashes all employment and taxes from homes not being built. It is a forever increasing downward spiral both to people and to the government.

Because it is Trump doing this, there seems a duty among the MSM, Democratic Party and then many of their followers to just rant "Trade War! Trade War!' - when really it is "PROTECT THE SUPER RICH! PROTECT SWEATSHOP FOREIGN LABOR!"

Again, tariffs are nothing new. They trace way back to the earliest years when tariffs were imposed primarily to protect against all the cheap products coming in from Britian's slave and child labor shops in their colonies such as India etc.

 

I know......where were all these Leftist economists and the cult following back in February? Where was the Never Trumpers panicking about a trade war?

Why weren't they playing chicken little with the sky is falling back then?

How come none were talking about China and its steel dumping or about the defective Chinese steel?

 

“Muh crumbs.”

 

Tariffs are nothing new.
And there is history as to the outcomes of across the board tariffs have on the US and world's economies.

Check them out sometime.
I've even linked a few stories, if you are interested in what happened.

 

So far you haven't come up with anything to counter raising the tariffs. Just why is that?

Moreover you said nothing about the Chinese and the defective steel they dump.

 

It is clear you've just dug into your position. Most on the forum do that. If so, there is no debate even possible.



The steel and aluminum producers are screaming they are going broke.

(CNN)As the backbone of American manufacturing, the steel industry is essential to the world's water and food supply, energy generation and national security. The U.S. military uses steel extensively, ranging from aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to missiles, armor plate for tanks and every major military aircraft in production. There are a lot of reasons to take pride in American steel.

But today, our steel industry is being hurt by an unprecedented surge in unfairly traded imports, with record amounts of foreign-produced steel flooding into the United States. Cheap, subsidized foreign imports are taking steel jobs away.

In 2015, almost one in three tons of steel sold in the United States was produced outside the country. The import crisis is now beginning to get the national attention it deserves. The crisis has become the topic of presidential debates, candidate interviews and stump speeches. And it's about time.

Steel supports hundreds of thousands of American jobs. But because of these unfairly traded imports, many American steel producers have had to make difficult decisions affecting steelmaking communities. Steel companies have closed down major facilities, or reduced production at those plants, resulting in devastating layoffs and job losses for many families who have made steel for generations. More than 12,000 steel jobs have been lost in the past year, as imports took a record 29% of the U.S. market.

At the same time, U.S. steel production has continued to decline. Domestic shipments for 2015 stood at nearly 87 million tons, a nearly 12% decrease over what American steel mills shipped in 2014.

China's government-owned and -supported steel industry represents almost half of the world's steelmaking and more than half of the world's overcapacity. Between 2000 and 2014, Chinese steel production increased a whopping 540%, while U.S. production declined 13%. As has been said by one steel company CEO in testimonybefore the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the Chinese government is a company disguised as a country.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/opinions/american-steel-industry-gibson-schmitt/index.html

China's steel factories are NOT based upon profit-lose of steel production, but overall government goals as the factories are all government owned. China is dumping massive amounts of steel onto the market to break all other producers - even if losing money doing so - as this leads to permanent closure of competition. Run your competitors out of business and then you can charge anything you want and have huge extortion abilities in other negotiations. Once an industrial sector is significantly reduced this shatters the entire infrastructure supporting it too. It is not a matter of just locking the door to shut down and then unlocking it to reopen months or years later - because it isn't just about the factory but the entire network of supply and distribution.

What happens if China substantively takes the whole market and then doubles its prices or cuts it off completely? Just close down every auto and manufacturing company in the USA? At the same time, with steel costing us vastly more for our factories than it cost China for their factories, competition is impossible.

By this tactic, Japan initially smashed the US steel industry, with China now smashing everyone in the same tactics. If our steel industry now takes the final death blow hits, with it so does the "backbone" of American industry.

 

"Steel is found everywhere from bridges to sinks, but the global steel industry is going through the worst downturn in 50 years.

An unbalanced supply and demand equation has left even China, the world's largest producer and consumer of steel, calling for global cooperation to try and tackle the industry's problems.

But while China is calling for cooperation, many blame China's steel mills for flooding the market with cheap supply.

China has produced more steel in the last two years than Britain has since 1870.

Over in the UK, Tata Steel, an Indian company, put its entire business up for sale, blaming cheap Chinese imports for its decision.

The UK boasts the world's oldest steel industry and Port Talbot in south Wales is home to Britain's largest steel plant.

With the UK steel industry on the verge of collapse, we see how tens of thousands of jobs are at risk with the imminent closure, or at least significant downsizing, of the Port Talbot steelworks, which has already been on the decline for decades."

https://www.google.com/search?q=us+...AhXQyVMKHQCzDtMQ9QEIMzAE#imgrc=ggCnCJLy4nRUjM:

China has been dumping massive quantities of cheap, government subsidized steel on the market to shatter the USA, UK and other Western economies. Once they have broken US and Western steel production, we are 100% at their mercy.

Most people don't understand business because they never had one. So they just rely on slogans and wrong-logic. Someone who never had a business tends to think of a business loses 50% of its sales, then the business lost 50% of its profit. But, in fact, most businesses can not lose more than 10 to 20% sales before the business no longer is profitable and goes broke. This is no different than what happens to people who lose 50% of their income. They lose their home, car, credit - but still have all the debts despite no longer having the house, car and credit cards as the debts of those still exists.

You can't just turn steel production on and off.

 

I have.

 

`
Point well taken.
`

 

On their own, the tariffs appear unlikely to affect growth or inflation to a great degree, economists said. Mr. Trump’s tariffs “would by themselves have only a small macroeconomic impact,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s trade agenda during the campaign. Mr. Zandi said they were likely to add not quite 0.1 percentage points to inflation, which is currently hovering just under 2 percent, and to reduce economic growth by only a few hundredths of a percentage point.

What worries many economists, particularly on Wall Street, is the prospect that Mr. Trump is set to launch a broader trade war. The national security grounds he is invoking as rationale for the tariffs could provoke swift retaliation from trading partners such as Canada, which will be affected far more by the measures than China will.

The tariffs could also bring condemnation from the World Trade Organization — and a potentially dramatic showdown if the United States ignores rulings from the group, which has been marginalized by the Trump administration.

Other liberal economists caution that such a scenario remains unlikely. “I’d expect some counter-tariffs on our exports, maybe from China on food products” as a result of the tariffs, said Jared Bernstein, a former Obama administration economist who is now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “You always hear trade war at these moments. That doesn’t mean that’s always wrong, but it usually is.”.....snip~


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/...a-trade-war-which-could-undermine-growth.html


A lot of coulds, might, and maybes from the NY Slimes and its sources. Still they did manage a bit of truth.

Oh and there it is....the Economists on Wall Street are worrying about that Trump COULD launch a broader Trade War. Not that Trump is. But that he could. There is a possible prospect for that.

 

You have? Is that in this thread? Or are you going with what the Wall Street Economists and their coulds, might, and maybes are saying?

 

Eh, so in the year I get a new car I offset the increase by buying one or two fewer bottles of whisky.

j/k ...I buy both.

 

Those are just generic looking for when world economics turned downward and blaming it on tariffs. Drive thru the Rust Belt and explain how wonderful cheap imported steel has been for the USA. Granted, it has been FANTASTIC for China.

This has EVERYTHING to do with China. They are dumping massive amounts of government subsidized steel on the world market to do the final death blow to USA and Western steel production. Then they control not only all steel prices, but can break any foreign competitor such as us in any industry that uses steel.