Yes, steel and aluminum are not only strategic to our national defense, they also drag other jobs with them, as you said in construction, also iron ore mining and lots of transporation.
The tariffs chosen make a big difference. Note that Trump is not pushing tariffs in clothing because Asian clothing is far cheaper. Plus if you tariffed the imports of Chinese or Malaysian clothing, retail stores would go out of business -- they need the high mark-up to save enough money to afford people staffing their stores.
With Asian suppliers they can get a mark up 10 times their cost.
One of my thoughts was that the increase in economy could also help the employees in getting a bigger piece through their wages that will dispel this insane blind raise to a national $15 an hour wage the libs are trying to pander to their constituents. (And you notice I said a piece) Arbitrarily Driving up a single entity of a system of budget without trending or actual liquid capital for businesses is a prescription for chapter 11. But as long as the owner is willing to take his cut first and increase the size of the pie on the ladder, everyone wins.
What libs do not understand about business is the followup. The more spending cash that’s out there, the more the holder spends. Better cars, homes, clothing, trips....people reward themselves for success. It also can make it profitable to understand that the truck driver that you paid to deliver your widget, with more money in his pocket, can finally afford your widget.
Am I describing trickle down? Damn right. And it is the only self sustaining economy that will evolve by itself. What we have now is an artificially induced, low wage, high cost economy. Trump know that. And he took a page out of Reagan’s book to fix it. And he’s already started.
And all it took was putting the money back into the hands of the public by giving them back their money and their say in their economy. For 240 years this country has independently worked on a free enterprise system that the world is jealous of and has tried and failed to copy, change, and make work. It was the change part that has them starving. Is it perfect, nothing is except God. But if it wasn’t the closest thing to Heaven out there, why are so many people trying to get here and maybe die trying? And you’ll notice the operative words is “their.”
rwood