Trump's Tariffs Worry A Small Steel City In Pennsylvania

https://www.npr.org/ ^ | ASMA KHALID | June 8, 20185:00 AM ET

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Dan Moore, a 58-year-old steel mill worker, gives the president an A+ on everything from tax cuts to foreign policy, but he is not so sure about tariffs.

"We need tariffs, but when it starts to impact the company where you work ... you're thinking, well wait a minute, time out!" he said.

Moore is worried the tariffs might cost him his job. The mill where he works, NLMK Pennsylvania, in the town of Farrell, not far from the border with Ohio, employs 750 workers and is a subsidiary of Novolipetsk Steel, or NLMK, Russia's top steelmaker.

But even though NLMK is creating American jobs, the company is being hit with a 25 percent tariff on steel because it imports raw steel slabs from Russia before turning them into coils in Pennsylvania and then selling that steel to customers that manufacture cars or pipes, for example.

Bill Almashy, a 48-year-old crane operator at the mill, worries that NLMK might not be able to survive the tariffs.

He knows what it is like to lose a steel mill job. This is the third mill he has worked at in recent years. One of the previous mills went bankrupt; the other moved most of its jobs to Mexico. Along the way, Almashy lost his home, his pension and his 401(k).

"A lot of steel in America is gone," he said. " Basically our politicians failed us."

And so when he first heard about President Trump's tariffs, he "applauded" the president. He says he still does but doesn't understand why his company should be punished for importing steel.

"Even if they're foreign-owned, but they have a factory in this country and they're employing American workers, to me, that's an American company," Almashy said.

To him, exempting this Russian-owned steel mill from tariffs would be a matter of putting "America First."

And that's the crux of the debate.

Moore voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but during the last presidential election, he became enamored with Donald Trump's promise to bring back jobs and renegotiate trade deals. He thought tariffs in the abstract would be beneficial, but now that they could hurt the company he works for, he thinks the Trump administration needs to re-evaluate the idea.

"Tariffs — they may help some people, but they're gonna hurt a lot of people too. I don't know exactly how you balance that," Moore said. "Maybe it's not the right time for tariffs." Maybe, he says, the president ought to focus more on wages and jobs instead.

Moore is about to head into the mill down the road for his shift. He is wearing a dark blue work uniform shirt over his round belly and a Trump hat over his graying hair. It's a souvenir he picked up during Trump's inauguration.

Moore insists he has "no regrets" about his vote, even though he knows some might think that's strange given the precariousness of his current employment due to the very tariffs Trump introduced.

"President Trump was the better candidate," he says flatly.

[InterceptPoint]

Tariffs are disruptive to both sides of the trade.

Americans pay more for imports and that is going to hurt marginal enterprises who are heavily dependent on imported goods.

And of course the foreign exporter to the U.S is hurt by the reduction in demand for his products due to their higher price in the U.S.

So I’m against tariffs as a long term method for trying to make trade “more fair”. And ... I THINK THAT IS TRUMPS POSITION AS WELL. He is basically a free trade, may the best man win, advocate.

So I’m betting that Trump believes he can use tariffs to force us that direction.

But I could be wrong. It has happened.

[henkster]

The United States produces about 78 million tons of steel annually. We rank 4th in world production, having recently been passed by India. China produces 850 million tons of steel annually, over half of the world’s production (wrap your head around that number, if you will).

We consume about 40 million tons per year more than we produce. Seems to me that we need to produce more steel.

[henkster]

He knows what it is like to lose a steel mill job. This is the third mill he has worked at in recent years. One of the previous mills went bankrupt; the other moved most of its jobs to Mexico. Along the way, Almashy lost his home, his pension and his 401(k).

The mills he worked at were production mills. They closed as U.S. steel production has been in decline for many years. The "mill" he works at now is not a production mill, its a second-level processing mill.

The tariffs are designed to produce more steel domestically. The Russian company that owns his processing mill will either close, sell to another company, or start buying American steel. But even if it closes, if the product he makes has a demand, another American mill will have a job for him to pick up the slack.

[oincobx]

>>>The Russian company that owns his processing mill will either close, sell to another company, or start buying American steel. But even if it closes, if the product he makes has a demand, another American mill will have a job for him to pick up the slack.

Unless the Russian company closes the mill, produces the goods in Russia and exports them to America tariff free since the tariffs are on raw steel.

[trebb]

We have our share of folks on FR who also get stuck on the short-term and personal picture and who would rather we keep getting screwed to the tune of over $800 Billion a year as long as they don’t have to adapt to anything new - even if the longer term new stuff is heavily in their favor.