LETTER: Is steel really thriving?
The U.S. steel industry saw a bit of a boom after Donald Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel from China last year. It was only last week when Donald Trump made this claim at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“I don’t want to be overly crude. Your business was dead. And I put a little thing called a 25% tariff on all of the dump steel all over the country, and now your business is thriving,” he said at the rally in Monaca.
Thriving? Let’s look at the numbers. U.S. Steel announced layoffs of hundreds of workers at a plant in Michigan. The move is said to be temporary, but workers will be off the job for at least six months.
U.S. Steel’s stock price is off 73% since March 2018.
Domestic steel prices have fallen 37% since Trump announced the tariffs.
Perhaps rubber-lined MAGA caps for use in the soup line would be called for, eh?
Lawrence Nader
Canonsburg