Posted on 03/12/2018 10:25:15 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Trump administrations 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 presidents 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 sectormainly 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.
Its 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, Im 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. Thats 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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While I am not in favor of the tariffs (see my other comments below. I think the analysis overstates what I think is an otherwise good case against them. I do think on balance the tariffs will neither address our trade balance with China, nor be a net jobs saver and producer. But, I think the report overstates by a big margin the number of jobs that MIGHT be jeopardized by the tariffs.
And yet, as the “technology” sector has been immensely harder hit by unfair trade practices and the nationalist-mercantilist state-capitalist rigged advantages of tech manufacturing in China, it is in much greater need of correcting imbalances in than steel or aluminum - particularly in the dollar-volume of. Most American tech manufacturing companies products are NOT manufactured in the U.S. Many have major manufacturing plants in China.
If I wanted to help undo the trade imbalance with China and bring American manufacturing home, I’d have tariffs on every imported piece of telecommunications and video technology - across the board, whether produced by a U.S. company or a foreign company, making it advantageous for Apple and the rest to move manufacturing to the U.S., and seriously denting the trade balance with China.
The tariffs on steel and aluminum will hardly make a dent in the trade balance with China as China is not from whom we get the most imports of those materials. But tech is.
Whether a tariff on steel is a good idea or a bad idea depends on whether you're SELLING steel or BUYING it.
Why doesn't this line of thinking apply to steel and aluminum producers?
That doesn’t answer my question. It’s alleged that because of the tariff the steel companies will begin competing with each other and through that and efficiencies will drive the prices down to the pre-tariff rates. If they were willing to do that in the first place then they didn’t need the tariff.
Learn something new everyday.
That message was kind of funny.
It was long-winded management speak.
I was going to have the original cj7 wheels and center caps redone by them. They were original.
The more I thought, the more on the fence I was. I’m going with white wagon spoke type wheels.
Total Bull Shit! The same hucksters are using the same old tire platitudes that have been proven totally false.
We had the strongest economy in the world with tariffs.
Removing them has been a disaster. It de-industrial prized the United States.
Because their customers have always had the out of buying low cost goods form countries that do not impose the same labor/saferty/environmental standards we impose on our industries
Those customers still do. And they almost always have the option of using different materials, too.
Actually it does.
But, as usual, you are not actually interested in facts and discussion, you simply want to pursue your habitual knee jerk contrarianism.
Its the other way around. We will gain 5 out of 6 jobs.
Please takes your lies and con some where else.
We tried your Bull$hit economics and pseudo math and everyythey are saying was a proven lie.
If we have 0 tariffs, then jobs will leave. It will destroy our economy to lose our industrial jobs. Just like it had been over the last 20 years.
That is not actually true.
A few years ago Ford made a decision to manufacture their F-150 pickup trucks out of aluminum instead of steel. You don't think other processes have the same flexibility in materials?
Ford is an OEM, they can make F150’s out of Swiss cheese if they want to. Do you think all metal purchasers are OEMs? Different materials can not be swapped randomly for a given process/outcome.
I remember the ad campaign a few years ago where Poland Spring made a big deal out of their initiative to become more "environmentally friendly" by reducing the amount of plastic in their bottles.
They didn't really give a damn about the environment. They just wanted to reduce the plastic content of the bottles they used because the high cost of crude oil made the plastic so much more expensive.
Many purchasers of metal are job shop/contract mfgs, and have no say in the material used, it’s their customers part, and they very well could be tied into long term contracts with a set price over the contract period/# of pieces.
All I know is that tall buildings in this country are constructed by “ironworkers” — even though steel replaced iron as the standard material for skyscrapers long ago.
Which also means may not result. I could win the lottery, too, but I may not.
If you're at all savvy, you will have already scouted out the alternatives.
I am old enough to remember when this country had REAL steel mils-—REAL aluminum producers-—REAL loggers—REAL lumber mills-—REAL paper mills, and on & on & On. In N Calif alone, there were over 120 lumber mills where logged lumber was processed. Today, they are gone. How many jobs do you all think that amounted to? OVER an owl that will nest where ever it pleases.
I call BS on this headline.
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