President Trump imposed a 25 percent ad valorem tariff on steel. When questioned whether the tariffs were permanent, President Trump’s Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing, Peter Navarro, responded that the tariffs are “permanent because the problem is permanent.”
Navarro is right. America’s steel industry has been brutalized for 50 years by unfair trade with the Third World.
...not to mention that Chinese steel is junk. Japanese steel used to be junk, but it has come a long way.
ReplyDeleteJapanese knife steels particularly D2, CPM-S35VN and others are very good, equal to most anything made here or in Europe. There's still nothing like 1095 properly quenched and tempered though.
Nemo
We have to protect major manufacturing and build stuff again... Service industry just doesn't cut it, especially retail and dining....
ReplyDeleteJD
It’s odd how tariffs are somehow good for every other country but the United States…
ReplyDelete8 years ago the Turks were flooding the rebar market, but I haven't welded lightpole cages since then.
ReplyDeleteShit was real dirty but cheap.
The last time Trump put tariffs on steel, the steel distributors immediately raised prices 15%.
ReplyDeleteWhen the actual tariffs went on, they raised them an additional 15%. That has stayed on since that time.
The greedy bastards are about to do it again, I fear.
The only thing unique for the steel industry is that it is still alive. Every US industry has been made to compete with other countries and slave labor since 1945. This is the reason every-town USA has an empty down town section. All those businesses that won the war were ran out of business. Their goods and machines were sold to the highest bidder then shipped over seas.
ReplyDeleteA decent summing up of the history of stubbornness and incompetence that destroyed US Steel: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e_zA1vT464M
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