I hope you can take a bit of headline sarcasm because the true story follows.
Trump’s Man of Steel Posturing
Bloomberg reports Trump’s Man of Steel Posturing Makes America Weaker
Trying to protect the steel and aluminum industries as a path to nation-building is a doomed project that will make America weaker, not stronger.
Tariffs of 25% on imported metal that Trump has promised to unveil on Monday will be as ineffective in fostering domestic production as the previous round of restrictions he kicked off in 2018. Since those actions, US production capacity for aluminum has fallen by 32%, while steel is down 3.6%. Only a mad king would expect a different result from trying the same thing again.
Unlike, say, mobile phones, computers, machinery and consumer goods, the US doesn’t get much of this stuff from its geopolitical rivals. Instead, it’s overwhelmingly from allies and countries that the US needs to keep on side, most of all at a time when it can’t afford to stand alone against the rising tide of authoritarianism. Canada and Mexico, the European Union, Brazil, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan combined account for 80% of US steel imports. Add in Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — home to three of the biggest overseas US military bases — and you’re looking at about 70% of imported aluminum, too.
The two metals are also some of America’s most extensively protected sectors: On top of the 2018 Trump administration tariffs, they are the subject of just under half of the 736 anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders and agreements currently in force.
The US and Canadian aluminum sectors, in particular, operate as a more or less integrated single industry: Canada uses its cheap and clean hydro power to smelt new metal and become the world’s biggest exporter of freshly-smelted blocks, while the US employs its vast consumer market to be the biggest exporter of scrap for making recycled aluminum. That shouldn’t be dismissed as just “waste:” Such recycled aluminum supplies about a third of global demand.
The 2018 tariffs were such a big hit that Trump needs to double up. And please note that Biden kept all of Trump’s tariffs and added more.
Anyone in their right mind would be pleased at getting bargain aluminum from a good neighbor and strong ally using clean hydropower.
But no. Trump sees this very beneficial arrangement as another “emergency” in need of fixing.
Tit-for-Tat and Tat-for-Tit
Also note that Trump Vows US Will Respond to Europe’s Metal Tariff Retaliation
- President Trump said the US would respond to the European Union’s countermeasures against his new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, raising the risk of further escalation in his global trade war.
- The EU launched “swift and proportionate countermeasures” on US imports, reimposing balancing measures from 2018 and 2020 and adding a new list of industrial and agricultural goods, worth up to €26 billion.
- Canada also announced 25% tariffs on about C$30 billion of US-made products, targeting steel and aluminum as well as other consumer items, with other countries opting for negotiations to avoid tit-for-tat tariff wars.
Tariff Tradeoff
Investopedia reports How Trump’s Metal Tariffs Could Eliminate 75x More US Jobs Than They Save
In 2018, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports in an effort to give U.S. steel producers a leg up and stop job losses in that industry.
By 2019, President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum had cost the U.S. economy 75,000 jobs among companies that use metals to produce products, and gained 1,000 jobs in metal production.
“The 2018 steel tariffs just called to remind you that steel is produced by a tiny sliver of the economy, but used as an input by a much broader swathe of manufacturers,” Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, posted on X.
The high taxpayer cost of “saving” US jobs
Finally, please consider 2020 article The high taxpayer cost of “saving” US jobs through “Made in America”
President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden differ on many issues, but government procurement is not one of them. “Buy American, Hire American” was Trump’s campaign slogan in 2016, while “Made in America” and “Buy American” together appear 29 times in Biden’s 2020 policy document. Trump promised to crack down on federal agencies that grant excessive waivers to skirt Buy American rules, and Biden committed to closing loopholes that allow foreign content to creep into American-made goods. Both leaders harbor special affection for manufactures, particularly for iron and steel melted and poured on American soil, and for the merchant marine to carry goods between US ports. The claim of generating well-paid jobs is central to the argument for spending taxpayer dollars solely on American goods.
When presidential candidates agree, the policy must be a political winner. Nevertheless, “Buy American” or “Made in America” as a slogan for excluding imports is an economic loser. We calculate that the annual taxpayer cost for each US job arguably “saved” by Made in America probably exceeds $250,000. We put “saved” in quotation marks because buy national requirements essentially shuffle jobs from other sectors of the economy to the procurement sector. And the shuffling takes a toll on economic efficiency, which shows up in elevated price tags on everything from computers to bridges. On balance, buy national requirements create no new jobs, but they do save jobs in domestic firms that supply government needs, often at a high cost to taxpayers.
Related Posts
April 20, 2018: Fed Study: “Tariffs Kill High-Paying American Manufacturing Jobs and Businesses”
On occasion, Fed economists get things correct even if the voting members get things backward.
November 22, 2024: Should Anyone Care Whether Underwear Is Produced in the US or China?
This ridiculous-looking question gets to the heart of tariff discussions.
February 10, 2025: Trump to Impose 25 Percent Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum, Expect Higher Prices
All US consumers of steel and aluminum will pay higher prices, especially the automakers.
February 26, 2025: Trump’s Tariffs Will Increase the Cost of a Pickup Truck by $8,000.
Trump says it’s full speed ahead with tariffs. It will cost US jobs.
2025 Jobs Saved Analysis
Light truck retail sales in the United States increased to 12.9 million units in 2024.
At $8,000 per vehicle, that’s a cost of $103 billion, how many jobs will that save?
If your answer is a tiny number in the steel industry (perhaps), but hugely negative overall, then you are thinking correctly.
We call this …. Winning!
Of course the US can manufacture and produce whatever they want but it won’t happen overnight. Also, like Dave Chapelle says, we want to wear Nikes, not make them. You have to pick your targets but don’t expect other countries to stand by while the US sucks up every advantage in the room and decimates the economies of other countries to their advantage. Other countries will stop using American services and products so they can encourage their own industries to produce the things they want and need domestically and employ their own citizens. This is a zero sum game. Trump doesn’t get it.
how much do you want to pay for it?
That is the question
Canada had already placed tariffs on China, since October 2024.
100 percent surtax on Chinese EVs, 25 percent surtax on steel and aluminum. China just announced retaliatory tariffs on Canadian farm and food imports. Canada just extended their policy to America. Progressive MSM’s agenda is to blame Trump for starting the conflict. Instead of pointing to liberal Canada for firing the first shot. And the lazy financial brokers only hypothesize on the effect of Trumps tariffs, rather than analyze two quarters of Canadian tariff economic data.
Trump made the mistake of enacting tariffs with all countries, at one time. He should have focused on a single nation, starting with either China or Canada, since they were already engaged in mutual tariffs.
You have that completely backwards.
The US announced 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs and 25% on Chinese steel and aluminum in May 2024.
We then pressured Canada to do the same. Being our best friend and ally, they agreed and put the same tariffs on China in October 2024. We also pressured Europe, but they only put 36% tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Now, don’t you feel stupid for making sh*t up and having it thrown back in your face?
Similarly:
Since Trump was elected he has begun placing tariffs on just about everyone in the world, including Canada. Canada certainly did NOT start this. They are merely responding to being stabbed in the back by their former friend and ally.
Hope that helps clear things up for you.
You’re good at pointing out issues sarcastically. I guess that this is a “gift”, though it may just reflect a negative personality. Are you saying that tariffs are dumb just when they are applied by the US, even though the rest of the world tariffs the crap out of us? Previous governments in the US have decimated US manufacturing to the point that nobody knows what the US is good at making, other than Treasury securities. Are you saying that we should just keep doing that? Given enough time and the elimination of a lot of stupid regulations, I am sure that we could make aluminum at least as well and as cheaply as the Canadians. I am certain that you and your ilk will, in a couple of years, turn the ship around, such that we’ll be right back to gridlock, and then, in another 2, you’ll vote in a dem president. We’ll never know what we could have become. We’ll go back to borrowing money, massive corruption, and having the Chinese make all of our defense goods, as we prepare for war with, yep, China. I’m assuming that you don’t have children, so you can just be flippantly sarcastic about how inefficient Trump’s policies are. For people with children and grandchildren, restoring American industry matters a lot.
“Are you saying that tariffs are dumb just when they are applied by the US, even though the rest of the world tariffs the crap out of us?”
The first problem with your argument is that you have fallen for a false narrative. Most countries that we trade with actually have lower tariffs than we do.
Here are some trade weighted tariff rates:
US 1.5%
UK 0.7%
Australia 0.8%
New Zealand 0.9%
Vietnam 1.2%
Mexico 1.2%
European countries 1.4%
Japan 1.8%
Canada 2.4%
Israel 2.9%
Russia 4.2%
South Korea 4.8%
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/list-of-tariffs-by-country
“ I am sure that we could make aluminum at least as well and as cheaply as the Canadians”
No we cannot. We have dropped from 20 aluminum smelters to 4, because we cannot compete on price. We can certainly make it, but not as cheaply because we don’t have the cheap hydro-electricity that Canada has. Forty percent of the cost to produce aluminum, is electricity.
If we put a 25% or higher tariff on imported aluminum, we might be competitive. This allows US aluminum producers to raise their prices to match the higher imported price. It also might entice them to build new smelters, on the assumption that the tariff will stay in place permanently. Because it takes 10 years and a lot of money to build a new smelter.
This could result in the creation of a few thousand new jobs, ten years from now.
In the meantime, hundreds of US manufacturers now have to pay more for their aluminum and become less
competitive, go out of business, and we lose tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
You need to look at the big picture here. We will lose “more” jobs by putting tariffs on raw materials that we need like aluminum, steel, electricity, oil, potash, and lumber from Canada. Better to import those raw materials from Canada at cheap prices in order to help make our manufacturing and building industries stronger.
“At $8,000 per vehicle, that’s a cost of $103 billion, how many jobs will that save?”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. How many jobs were saved by shipping manufacturing jobs overseas and hollowing out various communities across the U.S.? It would be cheaper if all cars were made in China, rather than in the U.S. or the EU. When i was in Korea, i took a tour of a GM Korea plant, which made cars for Koreans. Would have been cheaper to shut down Detroit and import all cars.
Trump can break the international laws but not in the country as there is no “higher court” to enforce rules between sovereign states. ( according to John Mearsheimer)
Mish is pitting his readers against each other. He gets econ prof, ceo, mfg, retailers, foreigners, nativists, dems, reps, boomers/ zoomers, Christians/ Jews : a good stress tolerance medium.
The DOE selected Century aluminum to build a new smelter, the first in 45 years. It will cost $500 millions. In WWII Alcoa and Kaiser aluminum (Spoken WA) produced aluminum for the aircraft industry. Today they use recycled aluminum bc it’s cheaper. Five thousand workers will build the Century aluminum smelter. It will provide 1,000 permanent United steel workers union jobs. A skilled worker can make $60K/Y. Engineers: $90K – $130K per year. Radiologist up to $400,000/Y
China produce 45 million metric tons, India: 4,3 million. Russia: 3.8 million. Canada only 3,3 millions metric tons. If China shut us down we are grounded.
Isn’t Trump going to shut down the DOE? Oops, no aluminum smelter for you!
Dept of Energy.
The proposed Century aluminum plant is an exercise in grift.
The fantasy that is build it and they will come or build it and the energy will come.
Billions in subsidies required to build the highest cost aluminum plant in the world.
The Green Smelter: Century Aluminum Promises Kentucky’s Next Big Economic Boost, But with Some Risk
The Power Question
One potential barrier to siting The Green Smelter in northeastern Kentucky is the lack of existing clean energy infrastructure in the state. According to Boldman, part of the reason more projects aren’t already underway is the issue of interconnection. The energy market in Kentucky is particularly complex partly because so many different entities are involved, and partly because energy and politics are so closely intertwined.
“About 40 or so different large-scale solar proposals are going through different stages of development in Kentucky,” Boldman said. “Some of these will not go through, but some will make it all the way through.”
Unexpected environmental issues, financing issues and other problems that come up on each individual project can pose barriers.
Along with all of those expected issues, there’s also a federal backlog, causing delays in connection to transmission queues. Boldman says that in the last couple of years, federal efforts have “started to unjam that backlog.” She also notes that other states have gone through similar phases, and it typically takes about four or five years to get through the whole series of steps to break ground on solar developments.
Boldman describes the lack of available clean power as “a stumbling block, but not a killer.” The technology exists, the interest is there, and it’s at least partly a matter of having the political will to get the projects underway.
“Actually, the grant doesn’t say renewables,” Boldman points out. “It says carbon-free. So it could include other sources, like hydrogen or nuclear energy.”
She suggests that the project will likely require a mix of energy sources and expects that solar will be a big part of that mix.
Tariffs affect every industry differently. Here is a real example for gift items: The gift item is purchased by an importer from China for $5. The importer sells this item to a national department store chain for $10. A 100% markup. The retailer puts the item on the shelf for $20. A 100% markup. Let’s assume a 10% tariff. The tariff costs the importer $.50 per item (the tariff is imposed on the cost to bring the item into the US – not on the ultimate retail price). The importer can absorb the .50 tariff and still sell the item to retailer for $10, and make a 90% markup. Or, the importer can decline to absord the tariff. The retailer can absorb the .50 tariff and keep the retail price at $20, and the retailer still makes a 90% markup. Or, neither the retailer or importer are inclined to absorb the tariff, and the retail price is increased by the .50 tariff to $20.50. The consumer could decide that $20 is all she would spend and can avoid paying the tariff by buying a different item that is not subject to tariff. You will notice the manufacturer was not discussed to absorb the tariff. This is because for these products the manufacturer is working on a thin margin. But for more expensive, manufactured products, the manufacturer can absorb the tariff, as can the retailer, but not likely the importer, assuming there is an importer, as more expensive products are often sold directly to the retailer, cutting out the importer middleman.
Take automobiles, foreign manufacturers avoid a tariff completely by manufacturing their vehicles in the US. There are roughly 74 manufacturing plants in the US building foreign vehicles. Tariffs not only protect US based vehicle manufacturers, but also the 74 factories built by foreign producers.
You are confused. It’s not that complicated.
A great comment. Retailers use between triple keystone and up to x6 times markup. They have a lot of room to absorb. For China, Mexico, Canada and the EU jobs are more important than profit. Currencies pairs are doing the adjustment.
Your margins are very, very hopeful at best. Try using the cornerstone forumula with Walmart.
I read aloud SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS of this excellent Article, Mish. Your work is ON FIRE.
This is precisely what tariffs are meant to do. To spur innovation by raising prices so that more can be done with less. It is the innate genius of the policy.
It’s so genius that it worked. Right?
But since it didn’t we need to do it again.
Look – it’s idiotic – and the goals are contradictory.
Trump is clueless
https://mishtalk.com/economics/lutnick-says-tariffs-can-eliminate-the-irs-and-balance-the-budget/
Trump is the stupid representative of stupid people.
Perhaps the most crazy thing about Trump’s import substitution policy is that his very recipe has already been tried out by Latin American countries in the 1950s and 1960s, with devastating economic results for these countries. Trump and his economic team seem to be completely illiterate about the lessons of economic history.
It’s all about American exceptionalism. Far too many Americans are exceptionally stupid.
Do not point the finger at “Americans.” There are many of us that are SKEPTICAL of EVERYTHING UTTERED by Politicians in both mainstream sources (which I do not read) and the other sources which are quite often slanted the ‘other’ way. We are NOT stupid. We can see the ridiculousness of Tariffs. WE ARE NOT ALL TRUMPCO fans and certainly NEVER BIDENCO or KAMALACO fans….all corrupt as hell!
Far too many does not mean ALL. Dumb f*ck.
Stupid people are ever on the lookout for a straw man to battle.
u are brilliant !
You forgot about the economic devastation caused due to all the jobs lost by Americans, sending factories to China?
capitalism sucks, doesn’t it?
Those so-called “free trade” agreements were hugely beneficial to corporations and wealthy families but “fair trade” agreements would have slowed the pace and required some leveling of the trade prices. What we got in North America was a massive amount of cheap goods, much of it at the expense of those in manufacturing. And the promised retraining for displaced workers was cut back or eliminated. The Dems were guilty of not following through on promises as well. Which is why many voted for Trump in 2015, since too many didn’t see much difference between the main parties and Trump was the outsider (Just when the U.S. needed an FDR they got Trump). The anger at the increasingly vast gulfs in wealth inequality is driving many to populism, which unfortunately is transferring even more wealth into the hands of an oligarch class that has more in common with each other than with citizens of their own countries. Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, like the Russian oligarchs they seem to admire have no fidelity to democracy. The fact that Trumps message now is that the current system must be painfully ripped apart, at great costs to citizens, in order to restore the U.S. to greatness is frightening not just for the U.S. but for the globe..
Free trade agreements very beneficial to the poor and middle class.
Standards of living rise when you can buy more goods for less money – so you are essentially clueless
right, they tried it as communist policies, because tariffs are 100% anti-capitalist, and straight out of communism 101 playbook
Total nonsense. Foreign economies need American consumers. But we do not need them. We hold all the cards. China and India may have largest populations, but they can’t compete with the American consumer. Without our consumers, these economies would collapse.
So they can huff and puff all they want, but in the end even they know they can’t get away with cheating the American people any longer. And clueless wannabe economists will be schooled.
Bud, you are economically illiterate. Did you go to school?
. mfgs need retailers, retailers need consumers. he is right
Lol! That has to be one of the dumbest comments here this year!
Gentlemen,
Don’t be so hard on him…..He went to Clown school….But he couldn’t finish it…..He was not funny enough.
The experts are mocking: clown, dumbest, illiterate: Bayleaf stress tolerance training on Mish.
US consumes are deeply in debt.
I believe that Bayleaf is taunting us to somehow tick us off or something. IT IS TOO INANE to be real!
I see this blog has become a liberal echo chamber… as I predicted. Pen too many articles that echo rags like the NYT and WSJ, and you attract their mindless readers. Like flies to shit.
Likely an echo chamber of a handful of liberals with multiple aliases each. lol
Then why are you here? Go ahead an angrily tell us you’re leaving then you’ll be back with a new name but we will all know it’s you because you’ll repeat the same comments over and over again.
This has nothing to do with liberal or conservative. Im a libertarian if anything. This trade war is stupid. I would encourage you to read from well regarded news sources that don’t always agree with your beliefs. It really does help to understand the big picture even if you don’t agree with everything.
WSJ, Bloomberg, economist, and the Financial times are all good sources with varying viewpoints.
So why don’t you go somewhere else then?
I agree.
Off to your safe space then.
You hold only printed paper currency called USD. Your mouth will shut when the value of your currency drop or the world doesn’t accept as reserve currency.
you’re right the economies would collapse without the American consumer. you forget the flipside of that, that America’s economy will also collapse because we will not have he capacity to replace those goods for years, and if we do the price of goods will go up 10 fold. labor costs aside, we no longer have the factories to do it, s so now businesses will have to build factories and that will add further to the cost of goods.
Charting from 2017 to 2024 with a covid catastrophe and a Biden recession filling the gap is disingenuous. Short time horizons versus long time horizons define classes of humans. Reshoring of manufacturing jobs, prosperity, and fertility is a project for several consecutive Republican presidencies. Lift your eyes to the horizon and think long term.
What Covid catastrophe? Trump said he handled it perfectly. He also was very proud of the vaccine and was very disappointed when they didn’t call it the Trump vaccine.
I like thinking long term. Just not at the expense of the short term. 25% tariffs on all the aluminum that we must keep importing over the next 10 years will put our manufacturers at a big competitive disadvantage. By the time we are able to produce our own aluminum, we won’t have any manufacturing left.
One third of US manufacturers say they may move production off shore to avoid tariffs on aluminum and steel.
The entire Covid DATA SETS (which I have from Virologists who made the GREAT BARRINGTON DECLARATION) was NO WHERE PANDEMIC LEVEL. If anyone wants copies, I got ’em. The entire thing was a sham.
Lol! Sure. And the earth is actually flat. Dumb f*ck.
That manufacturer’s products will be tariffed.
So, you’ve let the cat out of the bag: this isn’t about manufacturing, it’s about manufacturing employment. So, you’re for policies that will impede or even reduce domestic manufacturing output, so that we can have more people working to make less at higher prices. And you view this production of less output at higher prices as a good thing as long as there are jobs attached to this weak – and tariffs are an admission of weakness, not strength – set of tariff policy proposals. Thinking long term, what these proposals do is 1) create an entrenched set of special interest industries that will be a) uncompetitive, and b) offer inferior goods at higher prices, 2) skew investment in our manufacturing capabilities by undermining competitive innovation in our import-using manufacturing sector (which produces more manufacturing output and creates more jobs than the weak, government-sponsored tariff-protected sector), weakens American competitiveness and the financial strength of the America people over time. The policies you propose are policies of weakness, not strength, and will result in declining American economic prospects over the long term.
China imposes 100% reciprocal tariffs on Canada:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/china-imposes-100-reciprocal-tariffs-on-canada/ar-AA1AvBSm#:~:text=Beijing%20announced%20the%20new%20tariffs%20on%20Saturday%2C%20saying,China%E2%80%99s%20Customs%20Tariff%20Commission%20of%20the%20State%20Council.
Yes. Old news. That is China’s response to Canada for putting tariffs on Chinese autos and steel. Which Canada did, because their ally, the USA, asked them to.
https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/b0f89b0d/canada-matches-us-trade-measures-against-evs-aluminium-and-steel-from-china
You’re welcome Canada.
Sincerely,
Your best buddy, the good ole USA
Fighting with 2 largest trading partners, almost certainly there will be recession in Canada.
Hey Mish, we all know by now that you don’t like tariffs so instead of repeatedly rehashing your opposition, how about a piece focusing on how the existing ‘free trade’ system is sustainable given mercantilist exploitation of the rules by China and Europe at US expense. We can’t forever continue running enormous deficits in tradeable goods paid for with financial assets so what’s your solution?
Well, we have been luxuriating in disinflation forces whilst over-spending in all developed nations for decades. Add in reserve currency status and the addict is born. Aint’t gonna be pretty.
We are running external deficits because we don’t want to save enough to cover our investments. Why is that só hard to understand? It takes only 30 minutes, a pencil, and a piece of paper to figure it out. If the US wants to run an external surplus, the obvious and only solution is a combination of less private consumption, i.e. more private saving for retirement, a lower fiscal deficit, and, if those things don’t work, less investments.
The main problem is USD as a reserve currency status. Its liked you’ve got unlimited credit card. You can spend, you can print as much as you like for many decades. All the printed papers are absorbed by the world happily till it doesn’t.
You enjoyed that status for too long and seems unsustainable now and urgently needed to change the course. All the choices are not good. Prepare for it.
Everybody gets annoyed when it’s payback time.
yeah, but it’ll work this time For sure.
All we need is bauxite and iron ore to produce aluminum and steel. We will build our fleet, roads, bridges, pipelines and planes using them. If S. Korea or Germany will build a new shipyard small co will serve them, financed by banks. All we need is to replace import.
We will also need a LOT more electricity.
So ten years from now we will be able to produce all the aluminum we need, but likely at much higher prices than what we could import it for.
In the meantime, we will put tariffs on all that imported aluminum and disadvantage our manufacturers that use it.
Brilliant.
We need coal mini nukes and inverters.
We need a lot more electricity capacity, but it won’t come from coal or nuclear.
We are producing and using less coal every year. It cannot compete with natural gas.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/coal-production
SMRs are becoming an expensive dead end. Although they can be built, they cannot be built cheap enough to compete with natural gas and renewables.
The reason that Quebec has all that aluminum production is because they have a crap load of hydro-electric generation. Aluminum production and hydro-electric go hand in hand.
We need coal, nuke and inverters. We will drink less coke and beers.
You can repeat your statement a thousand times. It still won’t change the facts I stated above.
You need a lot of cheap hydro power to produce aluminum competitively, which the US does’t have, but the Canadians have it. Just get used to the law of comparative advantages. David Ricardo figured it out for you more than 200 years ago.
Lutnick has yet another new excuse for tariffs. He says Canada just doesn’t understand the US position. Lutnick says the US MUST produce ALL its own steel, aluminum and autos as a matter of “national security”.
Which is quite a statement, since it was the US that financed a lot of the aluminum production capacity in Quebec, so we had a “secure a reliable source of aluminum from our best friend and ally.”
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/aac01-us-aluminum-imports/
It will take a decade for the US to build out new aluminum production capacity, not to mention the build out of a huge amount of new electricity capacity that aluminum production requires.
In the meantime, by putting a 25% tariff on all aluminum that we simply MUST import, we are putting US manufacturers that use this aluminum at a competitive disadvantage.
So we will sacrifice tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs now, in order to gain a few thousand jobs in the aluminum industry a decade from now.
Aluminum is example in a case that expands far beyond aluminum. Many of the resource companies invited to operate in Canada are US companies. The aluminum smelters in Saguenay Lac St Jean are American owned and now since the Alcan take over, Rio Tinto. Canada invites foreign ownership. Most US oil companies exited the Alberta oil sands of their own will due to the dirty oil stigma, Imperial Oil remains (Exxon Mobil). I can’t make any sense out of this go-ahead by Trump.
Thanks Mish: it is a rare sight to behold factual statistics anymore.
Stephen Colbert drinks ‘Sackweiser’ from a plastic bag in skit mocking Trump tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum.
Stephen Colbert slams Trump’s tariffs on Canada on Late Show
The segment was titled “Stop the Steel“
“We estimate” is not a factual statistic.
Especially so when the source has a bias against the party implementing the change
This guy?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq76QSlRiPo&pp=ygUXU3RldmVuIGNvbGJlcnQgc3lyaW5nZXM%3D
My calendar reads March 13th, 2025 and don’t see the relationship.
One can make a rod for ones own arse in 2018, and another rod for ones own arse in 2025.
Look at the decline in annual production of aircraft, vehicles, homes since 2017. You will gain perspective.
You point out the lopsidedness of this Musical Tariffs cra*. Trump is wanting sometimes (depending on the size of the industry) over 90% of the country to pay for a few percentages type of even possible jobs!
This is the stupidly ignored Trump fantasy. First, not every industry can &/or should produce in the US. EVEN IF they did is it worth so many more paying for so little? In addition to the ever escalating countrer-tariffs it’s just stupid, transactional thinking that Trump does. He really just isn’t very bright. These are really stupid battles.
Yeah, the US should just stop making steel altogether and get rid of the entire industry and totally depend on foreign imports. Get rid of all the related jobs as well and expertise needed.
So that if and when imports are not available for whatever reason from countries in the Middle East or Asia the industrial base of the US falls apart.
We need to rely on foreign countries for steel to make cars, trucks, military equipment, and everything else too. Wonderful. Might as well get rid of those engineering courses at universities too as they won’t be needed either.
Hey, sounds just like the US did with pharmaceuticals – mostly made overseas in countries like India and China. Wonder what happens if there is war and the USA can’t get those drugs…..
Nah, don’t worry it is all a fantasy
No one said get rid of all steel.
In fact – Nippon wants to produce steel HERE, upgrading plants.
Both Biden and Trump were economic idiots, saying no.