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On the subject of tariffs, Rajesh Kumar Singh has been reporting for Reuters on how Trump administrations failed to deliver on promises and the policy of increasing tariffs on steel has had a negative impact on the labor market in the crucial state of Michigan. , battlefield.
Four years after Trump promised a new dawn for the struggling American steel industry, Great Lakes Works, once among the largest steel plants in the state, shut down steelmaking operations and put 1,250 workers out of work. A year earlier, the plant’s owner, United States Steel Corp, canceled a plan to invest $ 600 million in improvements.
Trump’s strategy had focused on protecting US mills from foreign competition with a 25% tariff imposed in March 2018. He also promised to boost demand for steel through major investments in roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
But higher steel prices as a result of the tariffs hurt demand from the Michigan-based American auto industry and other steel consumers. And the Trump administration has never complied with an infrastructure plan.
Nationally, the steel industry has been cutting jobs for the past year, since before the broader economic recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and now employs 1,900 fewer workers than when Trump took office, according to data from the US Department of Labor
While the tariffs failed to boost overall steel employment, economists say they created higher costs for major steel consumers, cutting jobs at companies like Detroit-based automakers General Motors and Ford. Nationally, tariffs on steel and aluminum caused the loss of at least 75,000 jobs in metal-using industries late last year, according to an analysis by Lydia Cox, Ph.D. candidate in economics at Harvard University, and Kadee Russ, professor of economics at the University of California, Davis.
In total, they estimated, the trade war had caused a net loss of 175,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States in mid-2019.
Democrats say their goal is to regain the votes of workers who lost to Trump four years ago, a key factor in his victory over Hillary Clinton. Trump won Michigan by less than 1 percent of total statewide votes.
However, Singh wonders if such statistics will change the opinion of voters in undecided states. He spoke with Bill Wischman, the financial manager of a Ford manufacturing plant in Plymouth, Michigan, who says Trump has done more to protect American manufacturing than any of his predecessors.
“He has made a wholehearted effort,” said Wischman, 51, who voted for Trump in 2016.
