(NEWSER) – US Steel Corp says it will soon restart a blast furnace in Illinois that has been cold for over two years thanks to the 25% tariff on imported steel announced by President Trump last week, Politico reports. US Steel President David Burritt blames “unending waves of unfairly traded steel products” arriving in the US for the poor fortunes of steel workers in Granite City. He believes the planned tariff will turn that around. Restarting the blast furnace at Granite City Works will take up to four months. And while some believe Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum will be political winners, many experts are predicting harm to the US economy.
Of course there are negative spins by economists. Did you not expect that?
They say more jobs will be lost because of retaliatory moves by Europe. So, the answer is to continue to let the United States participate in such unbalanced trade that our steel mills are shut down.
I equate steel and other manufafturing of that sort as a national security issue much like the maritime industry views The Jones Act. We must have the ability and base to defend ourselves in war time.
Having said that, these must be right to work shops and having them in states like Illinois is just waiting for the tick of a union to suck it dry and back into being uncompetitive.
Steel production is a core competency in our national defense. Q has plenty to say about foreign steel. This wasn’t merely an economic decision.
Tech is the new steel, it’s not as important…. Blocking the Qualcomm takeover by Broadcom would be strategic… Capitalism should be free to set prices…. Meh…
The arsenal of democracy during ww2 wasn’t just our ability to manufacturer but our having the raw materials to produce said manufacturing. The Germans and Japanese lost in big part because we eventually limited their ability to procure the required materials to produce their war machines. Remember the Germans had to produce fuel from coal from desperation.
“Capitalism should be free to set prices…. Meh…”
And that’s why we need the tariff. When those foreign gov’t subsidize the steel being dumped here, Capitalism is thwarted.
“Remember the Germans had to produce fuel from coal from desperation”
Yeah, with help from Standard Oil.
And Chinese steel sucks. More like pot-metal than steel.
I remember (from back in the 70s) a manager of a steel concern in Frederick MD telling me that it was cheaper to ship ore to Africa, have it processed, and shipped back – than to have it processed in America – the direct result of the greedy, job-killing unions.
If Union bosses would give up their thefts and embezzlements and actually do some work for their members (and not just for the mob and the politicians) American steel might become profitable.
Oh, well … to dream … the impossible dream!
izlamo delenda est …
So, are we still exporting tons of used steel and metals to China?