U.S. Steel and Nucor saw their shares gain 5.7 percent and 3.3 percent on Thursday after Trump’s announcement, but U.S. Steel stock’s price ended Friday with 1.3 percent loss.
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Steel mills in 2015 employed about 140,000 Americans, according to census data.
He later tweeted: “Our steel industry is in bad shape”.
“We are very close to a fast spreading trade war and in this kind of war there are only victims, not winners”, Katainen said. Trump campaigned on a promise to revive production of American steel and aluminum by staving off foreign imports.
Wrap your head around these figures.
McMillan attributed the slight drop for some steel companies to investors not reading too much into Trump’s tweets.
Try not to panic, chocolate lovers: Jeff Beckman, a spokesman for The Hershey Company, tells NPR that “we use steel for our USA plants and plant expansions and aluminum for our product packaging” – such as the foil used to wrap Hershey’s kisses. It shrunk dramatically – but mostly in terms of employment.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross held up cans of the three products on CNBC in his bid to defend the tariffs, which he said would lead to only “negligible” price increases to consumers. Imports make up about a third of the steel American businesses use every year, and more than 90% of aluminum used here. You slap a tariff on stuff I sell to you, I’ll come right back at you with a tariff on what you sell to me. But, historically, imposing these tariffs has done more harm than good.
Still, he says that the tariff is “very, very disappointing” and an election promise he thought Trump wouldn’t deliver on. Think of that flame alighting the night sky from the steel plants that still line the lake shore in Hamilton.
Instead, Trump (reportedly) chose to publicize a protectionist policy that would rankle all of America’s allies on a whim Wednesday night, a decision “born out of anger at other simmering issues”, according to two anonymous officials who spoke with NBC News. China ranks 11th, contributing less than 2 percent.
News of the new tariffs shook the Canadian industry.
Loomis pointed to the last time the US imposed tariffs on Canadian steel imports, which occurred under former president George W. Bush. “If there are tariffs, then we’ll have to deal with them”, he said.
“Six billion dollars’ worth of steel moves from Canada into the United States and six billion dollars moves into Canada (annually), so it’s pretty balanced”, he added, referring to figures from the Canadian Steel Producers Association.
The European Union is already thought to be considering retaliatory tariffs, roughly one third of which would target steel, one third agriculture, and one third other products.
But to conform with WTO rules such measures would have to apply to imports from all countries and could also hit producers including China, India, Russia, South Korea and Turkey.
With global stock markets tumbling in the face of a brewing trade war, European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen sought to offer a degree of reassurance, insisting “there is a little window of opportunity still open” and that Europe was posing a danger to the US.
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Just remember, though, that while revenge may be best served cold, this time it could cost you some cold hard cash.
