A week ago today, standing in front of 5,000 Royal Dutch Shell contract employees in Monaca, Pennsylvania — who, by the way, were told that, if they didn’t attend, they wouldn’t be paid — Donald Trump announced that the American steel industry “was dead” until he levied tariffs against imported steel last year.
According to the White House website, his exact words were, “…And, by the way, steel — steel was dead. Your business was dead. OK? I don’t want to be overly crude. Your business was dead. And I put a little thing called ‘a 25 percent tariff’ on all of the dumped steel all over the country. And now your business is thriving.”
Well, today — just seven days after Donald Trump delivered those remarks — it was announced that US Steel would be laying off 200 workers right here in Michigan.
If the name US Steel rings a bell, it might be because Donald Trump has referenced the company before, as an example of his brilliant manipulation of world markets to benefit American workers.
In reality, it would appear as though Donald Trump’s poorly thought through tariffs, in many cases, have done more harm than good, in large part because they’ve increased uncertainty in the market. In the case of the steel industry, Trump stepped in and announced tariffs against Chinese steel, causing American firms to start stockpiling the commodity, which, in turn, led to decreased demand the following quarter. While I suppose it’s possible that these recent job losses could be temporary, and the American steel industry could come roaring back to life, things aren’t looking good right now, and Donald Trump, who has campaigned on the power of his tariffs to reinvigorate industry, needs to step up and take ownership… You can’t keep issuing statements like the following when things are good, and then say, when the layoffs start being announced, that you didn’t play a role.
One last thing. While we’re talking about Trump and the economy, check out “The Trump vs. Obama economy — in 15 charts” in today’s Washington Post, if you haven’t already. There’s lots of good stuff in it.
10 Comments
And then that ruskie stooge Agent Orange gushes about Russia rejoining the G7 without even once criticising pootin for election interference. He’s treasonous and anyone who supports him is an enemy of The USA. But hey, some folks seem to get off on being hated. The borderline personality enablers of the narcissist in chief prefer negative attention to none at all, amirite?
Why is the deep state sabotaging Donald Trump like this? They must be terrified that he’s going to drain the swamp and bring them all to justice.
If you give all the letters of STEEL a numeric value, they add up to 44, which is Obama’s presidential number. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE! Obama is the one stopping the Steel industry from being successful! He controls the government and the economy from a mosque in Kenya!
Except for the job growth numbers. He’s not responsible for that. That’s all Trump! MAGA!!!
NBC News: “Coal workers fight for benefits as industry struggles under Trump”
Read more:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/coal-workers-fight-benefits-industry-struggles-under-trump-n1044576
In other news, our progress towards faux nativist (we’re not actually a western European country!) totalitarianism continues:
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/21/753062975/new-trump-policy-would-permit-indefinite-detention-of-migrant-families-children
Also retweets post clone him the kind oh Israel.
Guess that’s sloppy seconds compared to Greenland.
Whoa! Guess this new keyboard isn’t an improvement…
Once more :
’Also Trump retweets a post calling him the King of Israel. ’
HW it was Republicans that imposed outside dictators to strip mine
Detroit of its assets and poison flint you are too stupid to even be funny anymore.
Barking at me for some reason? Are you alright?