Here's how they reached their conclusions. Just spin the arrow until you get the number you want.
Posted on 03/12/2018 10:25:15 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Trump administration’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum from abroad could result in more than five jobs lost for every single job gained, according to an analysis from a group that advocates free trade.
The job losses will be direct and indirect, as price hikes will hit American companies that buy international steel to make screws, wires, and machines, Laura M. Baughman, president of the Trade Partnership, said Friday during a Heritage Foundation event.
The Trade Partnership anticipates a net loss of 146,000 U.S. jobs, Baughman said.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced steel tariffs of 25 percent and aluminum tariffs of 10 percent. Trump was acting on a Commerce Department report that found steel imports were about four times what U.S. exports are. The Commerce Department further said aluminum imports increased to 90 percent of total demand for primary aluminum.
“When I first heard about these tariffs and the president’s motivation for them, I really had to agree that I thought this was really a proposal of his that was coming from the heart,” Baughman said.
“I can imagine it must be really hard to travel around the Midwest and coal country and everywhere during the campaign and see so many communities that have been decimated and unemployed workers, and the hardship that they are going through,” she added.
The Trade Partnership uses the same economic model as the Commerce Department. However, Baughman said only the job gains were noted in the Commerce report.
The tariffs will increase U.S. employment for the iron and steel sector—mainly for aluminum, according to the Trade Partnership study.
However, the consumer price hikes and price increases for business will cost 179,334 American jobs for the rest of the economy.
There would be more than 36,000 American jobs lost in the manufacturing sectors, including a loss of more than 12,000 jobs for fabricated metals, more than 5,000 lost for motor vehicles and parts, and more than 2,100 in transportation equipment makers, according to the report.
The Trump administration and many labor unions contend that too many imports kill American jobs.
Baughman responds, cheap imported goods might cause job losses, but technology, consumer demand, and other economic changes are also responsible for unemployment in certain sectors.
“It’s so much easier, especially for politicians, to point to foreigners as the cause of all of our ills and therefore call import protections as the solution,” Baughman said. “Way more easier than it is to say, ‘Well, I’m going to take away your technology so that you can have your job again.’”
The tariffs Trump announced would have little impact on China or Russia, said Tori Whiting, a trade economist with The Heritage Foundation.
“The administration has said time and time again that China is the issue with steel, maybe Russia is the issue with steel,” Whiting said during the panel discussion Friday. “These tariffs will not do much, if anything, to impact our imports from China. Two percent of all U.S. steel imports come from China. That’s a statistic from 2016. That number has decreased significantly over the past five to six years because of anti-dumping and countervailing duties that have all but cut off a lot of imports of steel from China.”
Small business will be the hardest hit, said Vanessa P. Sciarra, a vice president with the National Foreign Trade Council.
“If you are a big company, say you are a big beverage manufacturer, you probably can jump and make other supply arrangements,” Sciarra said at the Heritage event.
“But if you are a small fabricator in Michigan or Ohio, and you use a foreign metal because it has been price attractive for you to do that or there has been some relationship you have with this supplier, those supply chains are going to be cut off by these increase tariffs,” she said. “You are going to have a hard time jumping to new sources of supply.”
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Let’s wait and find out.
Already? That was fast.
Where is the supporting data?
Mobody has a clue as to what will happen...
Man these trump haters are idiots!
If such a clearly unbiased group has analyzed the tariffs and thinks they could cost jobs, then it is clear we need to impeach president Trump immediately...
Spin Spin Spin. There are quotas before the tariffs kick in. Countries that have reciprocal trade deals with us and have addressed the unequal tariffs they place on American goods will not see a tariff scenario or will see a reduced tariff. The Globalists are scared but for themselves not for small business. They are laying crepe to try and keep their schemes in place.
M=N...
And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell , , ,
China sends slab steel and aluminum ingots to countries like Mexico and Canada who turns them into pipes, tubes, etc. So it is actually Chinese steel
What action should we take against China which has been subsidizing targeted industries for several years?
Should we continue to do nothing like we did under obama, w, clinton, bush 1, etc.? Should we continue to allow industries vital to our national security to be decimated?
Dems and the GOPe don’t have answers. They just do nothing but whine and complain.
Complete baloney. Manufacturers will do what they've always done...find other ways to save money AND be more efficient. In the meantime US steel companies will compete with each other and it won't be long until costs are back to what they were or better.
"Free trade" is great for late night dorm room discussions. But in the real world, nobody plays according to Hoyle. America plays by the rules and gets known as a sucker and an easy mark. We've been reamed out thoroughly by our "free trade partners".
Was the analysis done by the same people who give us the “expected job numbers” every month? Why do those people still have a job?
We’ll see.
The analysis misses the fact that free trade cost 5 jobs for every one gained by tariffs, precisely the reverse.
I’d like to see the methodology used in this trade analysis.
If we are allowing either state subsidies to industries importing into the US...or there are taxes on US goods, in excess of regular taxes, we are NOT engaged in Free Trade.
Free trade has failed the American worker when excess taxes are put on American exported goods or there are massive state subsidies.
There is also the statist slave labor problem in countries like China. In the south of China there is some real capitalism going on. But for the mine worker and factory laborer, there is immoral wages and conditions present which effectively turn laborers into a virtual slave labor force that exist only to serve the state.
Here's how they reached their conclusions. Just spin the arrow until you get the number you want.
Or not. But the National Review Never-Trump crowd is suddenly really, really worried about the welfare of our hourly wage-earners.
It is a good thing that it was impossible for Donald Trump to be elected President!
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