One of the most famous industries in the United States is to obtain a massive impulse from the last impulse of tariffs by President Donald Trump, at the potential cost of a broader deceleration in other parts of the United States economy.
Trump signed an executive order that increased 25% substantial tariffs in steel imports that first established 50% in March. He pointed out last week that the walking rate was approaching. He entered into force at midnight on Wednesday.
“We are going to bring it from 25% to 50%, tariffs on steel to the United States of America,” Trump said in a manifestation in Pennsylvania, “which will even more ensure the steel industry in the United States.”
New 50% tasks also affect aluminum products.
Tariffs on steel, along with those in imported cars and auto parts, have been imposed by authorities that are not affected by recent judicial decisions that question the president’s powers to promulgate commercial barriers.
The US steel companies have acclaimed Trump’s renewed impulse to increase the cost of US companies that depend on steel imports. It is a remarkably favorable reaction to tariffs in the middle of what in general has been a violent reaction against them.
“The American manufacturing steel is in the heart of President Trump’s plan to revitalize national manufacturing and return our country to an economic power,” said the Association of Steel Manufacturers in a statement that applauded Trump’s comments on the new 50%rates.
Investors have rewarded steel companies accordingly, sending shares of US steel manufacturers rise on Monday as US steel and aluminum prices rose.
Today, the steel manufacturing industry uses 86,000 US workers directly. It is a fraction of the workforce of half a million people that the industry told in the decade after World War II, although employment levels have stabilized more recently.
While commercial globalization has a substantial responsibility for the recession of Steel decades, experts say that advances in technology have played an equally important role. Steel production revolves more and more around the so -called electric arc oven technology, a more efficient production medium than classic open -sided open operations that prevailed during much of the twentieth century.
The same levels of production of Steel’s apogatos can now be achieved with only a fraction of the workforce. As recently as the early 1980s, about 10 hours were needed to produce a ton of steel. Today, the rate is as little as a single hour of man, assuming that multiple steel factories work together.
“The way we make steel in the United States has changed a lot,” said an expert on the local impact of industrial transitions, Ken Kolb, president of the Department of Sociology of the Furman University in South Carolina.
“There is simply no way to recover that scale of employment if a fraction of that workforce is needed to essentially achieve the same production levels,” Kolb said.
He estimated that perhaps 15,000 new direct jobs could be added assuming that capacity levels increase. But the broader cost for industries that depend on steel inputs, such as cars, construction and solar panels, which depend on raca aluminum components, would probably deny those gains.
“Theoretically, you can hire some people, but in reality, tariffs only increase the average steel price,” Kolb said. “And when the price of a product like that increases, companies simply buy less and lateral investment.”
A study found that, although Trump’s steel rates in 2018 created 1,000 new direct jobs, costs industries downstream that depend on steel to make their products up to 75,000 jobs because they became less competitive thanks to the highest costs.
While a certain limited capacity could be again in the short term, the nature of the tariffs limits any immediate work gain, said Josh Spoores, head of analysis of Steel Americas in the CRU group consulting.
If the highest tariffs remain, there could be new investments, said Spoores in an email, but building new steel factories can take at least two years.
Nor is it clear that American steel workers themselves are completely in favor of tariffs. United Steelworkers Union pointed out only a warm back for the measure in a statement after his Canadian chapter rebuked Trump’s announcement.
“While tariffs, strategically used, serve as a valuable tool to balance the scales, it is essential that we also seek broader reforms of our global commercial system, working in collaboration with trust allies as Canada to contain the bad actors and the excess capacity that our industries continue to undermine,” said the union.
The union has also shown signs of a division when it comes to the “association” proposed by Trump between Us Steel and Nippon Steel of Japan, whose acquisition of the US firm was previously opposed. Trump now sees the “creating” agreement up to 70,000 jobs.
“There is a lot of money on their way,” Trump told the followers at the Pennsylvania rally on Friday.
The United Steelworkers pointed out persistent doubts about the Nippon agreement in a statement on Friday.
“We have not participated in the discussions that involve Us Steel, Nippon Steel and the Trump administration, nor do we consult, so we cannot speculate on the meaning of the ‘planned association’ between USS and Nippon,” he said, using an initialism to refer to the US company.
He continued: “Whatever the structure of the agreement, our main concern remains with the impact of US steel fusion in a foreign competitor in national security, our members and the communities where we live and work.”
