'It hasn't benefited us a dime': Georgia steelworkers' verdict on Trump tariffs

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

'It hasn't benefited us a dime': Georgia steelworkers' verdict on Trump tariffs

US steel plants are meant to be booming in the wake of Trump’s tariffs – but tell that to production line workers in Trenton

Khushbu Shah in Trenton
Sun 11 Nov 2018 11.00 GMT

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The odd non-payday will add up, the workers say. It comes just weeks after a company-enforced lockout where the union workers survived on unemployment pay for five weeks. It was the first lockout in Georgia for 30 years.

It was not meant to be this way. Steel plants are meant to be booming in America in the wake of tariffs introduced by Donald Trump to try to get heavy industry moving again. But here the benefits of the controversial policy are yet to filter down. And in this town of 2,200, tucked into the north-west corner of Georgia between Tennessee and Alabama, these steelworkers doubt the benefits ever will reach the workers.

In June, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel imported from the European Union, Canada and Mexico, with the tax applying to a range of steel and aluminium products including sheets, plates, bars, pipes and “semi-finished” products. By making it more expensive for the country’s manufacturers to buy foreign steel, Trump says he’s protecting American workers and businesses.

Ironically, Caparo Bull Moose Industries is a US-based unit of a privately owned UK company – so one could argue the benefits are ultimately going to a foreign firm.

Management of the firm welcome Trump’s tariffs. “We are doing well,” Jim Charmley, president and CEO of Caparo Bull Moose Industries told the Guardian by phone from the St Louis headquarters. They are adding a dozen jobs to their manufacturing operations in Arizona because of the limits on Korean imports, he said, though he was unable to give specifics on financials.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/11/trump-tariffs-georgia-steel-trenton-economy

[guillaumeb]

1. More Trump supporters realizing that they have been fooled by the GOP again?

But the company is doing well.

Trump voters are truly those of whom Abraham Lincoln said: you can fool some of the people all of the time.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. It won't change their idiotic voting pattern.

[guillaumeb]

3. True. No matter how often they are deceived by GOP lies,

they will be fooled again.

And again.

[duforsure]

4. Farmers saying the same thing

And it was all a con by trump

[Wellstone ruled]

5. Hope folks have or had a chance to

here Debbie Dingle this AM. She reference what is really happening on the ground in Michigan,and that is the Lay Offs are on the way. And once they start,it will have a cascading effect.

Persons effected the most,those Union and Manufacturing workers who ate the fake message Trump peddled. We saw this with Nixon twice,and the same groups were affected by economic down turns as a result of Neo Con Polices.

Anxious people make ill informed decisions.