Remember those nifty steel and aluminum tariffs that Donald said would revitalize American industry?
Yeah, not so much. Because the Commerce Dept., which processes applications for exceptions to the tariffs, is both inundated with them (20,000 applications with only about 100 processed so far), and having to make head or tails about highly technical requests for specialty alloys not available in the US without having the numbers or training for the staff put to the task.
And those exceptions have to be requested annually.
I do understand that trade policy and tariffs and balancing tall these different factors is hard and painful. The problem comes when you have a president who just makes decisions by fiat without any idea of how he's passing that pain and difficulty along to … well, other Americans.
‘Companies are going to get screwed’: US businesses are trying to get exemptions from Trump’s tariffs, and the process sounds like a mess
The Commerce Department has received over 20,000 requests for exclusions from President Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum and according to a new report the process to review those requests is getting chaotic.
Ah, unintended consequences! Such is the penalty for allowing an idiot to serve as decision-maker.
Even worse is the unpredictability. How do you plan a year when you have no idea what anything is going to cost or who to buy it from?
It all makes sense if you assume Trump is a russian agent destroying the US because Putin ordered him to.
Most large corporations spent years or even decades building reliable supply chains. Tariffs are a wrecking ball that ignores the damage done to those businesses.
I was reading that China was producing the vast majority of Aluminium due to currency manipulation. Thus, keeping their prices so low. Is that true? If that's true and the way China and Russia are doing joint war games, boy oh boy, if we depend upon China to provide the vast majority of our metals, we'd be up fecal matter creek.
World aluminum production in 2016 (in metric tons)
1 China 31,873
2 Russia 3,561
3 Canada 3,208
4 India 2,896
5 United Arab Emirates 2,471
6 Australia 1,635
7 Norway 1,247
8 Bahrain 971
9 Saudi Arabia 869
10 United States 818
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium_production
However, US aluminum imports (2017):
Canada: US$8.5 billion (36.3% of total aluminum exports)
China: $3.5 billion (15.1%)
Russia: $1.6 billion (7%)
United Arab Emirates: $1.5 billion (6.5%)
Mexico: $1 billion (4.3%)
(http://www.worldstopexports.com/us-aluminum-imports-by-supplying-country/)
So China dominates the world's aluminum market, but is a distant second in what the US imports.
I see, and you're correct. But, I bet their able to do that due to the massive currency manipulation with the Yuan. I'd like to see Union Steel workers going back to work before I want Chinese minimum wage workers producing the aluminum. All the above countries manipulate their currency. I may not have voted for him, but I want our workers staying employed.
+James Develo Tarriffs won’t do that. They have a huge impact on consumers, but they don’t make it so cheap to manufacture in the US that we can compete with Chinese wages. If the tariffs go on long term, then US companies might manufacture locally, but they’ll do it using automation. So you still won’t get new jobs. Ditto with farm labor. The market is global. That’s not going to change.
+Kee Hinckley Precisely. In the meantime, they'll drive up the price for consumers of everything that's being tariffed.
Also, +James Develo, China sort of stopped manipulating its currency a couple of years back, as their own economy started having problems. (https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/357306-mnuchins-right-chinas-not-a-currency-manipulator) To the extent that it has started up again, its been in response to Trump's tariffs, not the cause of them.
But tariffs for Trump are a way of showing that he has Power! And also lets him tell stories to people that he's looking after their economic interests.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/357306-mnuchins-right-chinas-not-a-currency-manipulator
+James Develo More to the point a chinese worker produces aluminum, steel, or whatever while using about 1/4 the per capita energy needs of US workers. We can play silly buggers with currency till the sun cools but EROI doesn't lie or care.
The amount of coal, kilowatt/hrs, natural gas, or oil required to keep a chinese worker more or less happy is so much smaller than a US worker's needs that we're at a disadvantage for the foreseeable future. That's a product of urbanization.
Okay, but this is more about China stealing software and technology. Also, through in the fact that if a business or corporation in China wants to do business in the US, they can. However, if US business want to do business over in China, one must have a Chinese sponsor. I don't agree with the vast majority of things this President says, but the Chinese are still willing to negotiate. Has to be some type of balance. Maybe I'm naive or foolish, but I wouldn't want to do business on a one sided playing field.
+James Develo Are you really the guy who believes international trade is "fair" anywhere in the world? Ask a cacao or coffee picker if they would be working in tropical forests for pennies/day when they could be making US minimum wage doing anything. "Fair Trade" is a fairy tale ginned up for the easily distracted & dim-witted children.
It doesn't exist & never has.
no, not saying that and I agree completely. Star bucks and all other coffee chains rip off the farmer. That's the reason I don't purchase from them. I'm from a farming family. I know what goes into producing food. It isn't easy.However. I never said fair, you're reading more into what I wrote than was stated. I wrote balanced, and yes, there is a balance.
+James Develo You've sort of bounced all around here, starting off talking about why we need aluminum as a secruity risk, to complaining about Chinese currency manipulation, to IP theft by China and closed markets.
If your bottom line is that the US has legitimate complaints about China, that's fine. But tariffs have little to do with some of those things, and ones where they apply they don't appear to be useful.
Typically when you raise tariffs you do it because you have a goal. And you’ve communicated that goal so the other side knows what they have to do to get you to drop the tariffs.
Has anyone seen this goal? Because I sure haven’t.
+Dave Hill everyone else bounced around, not me, I just asked about aluminum and that seems to open Pandora's box. LOL. All in a good conversation. Sometimes clarity is the key to complete and total agreement. I'm not looking for agreement, just clarity, which would be nice in the world today. Peace