Comments 1 - 12 of 12 Search these comments
Or maybe it's not a total lie. Just a assholish misuse of data. We had an epic crash and reset. If you start in 2010, the number of manufacturing jobs created under Obama far exceed those created the last couple years (supposedly attributable to Trump).
Obama became President January 2009. Not 2010.
"B-b-but, it was Bush's economy until 2014! And it's still Obama's Economy right now!"
What's it like to use lies to sell your political viewpoint ? Do you know they are lies when you spread them ?
First they were screaming "tariffs are bad because steel prices will skyrocket". Now they scream "tariffs are bad because prices didn't rise
Was never screaming here myself.
From the day he was confirmed by the Senate, the Trump administration’s top trade official has championed the cause of America’s steel industry.
But US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who spent much of the past three decades at one Washington, DC law firm representing private sector interests in trade negotiations, has failed marvelously in his quixotic quest to revive crumbling US heavy industry.
Beyond the damage the protectionist trade policy has caused to the steel industry itself, which can be seen in plunging share prices, the metals duties have been a clear drag on the US economy as a whole. This was predicted by economists at the outset, and recent data suggests the forecasts were correct.
‘Embodiment of conflicts of interest’
So why did the administration’s cadre of protectionists, led by Lighthizer, pursue what were seen by many, including a reported majority of administration officials, as misguided policies?
“Robert Lighthizer is the embodiment of conflicts of interest,” Craig Holman, a specialist on government ethics at watchdog group Public Citizen wrote in an email to Asia Times.
“Thoroughly embedded in the interests of companies that are seeking trade deals, especially the steel industry, [Lighthizer] has now spun through the revolving door once again as Trump’s trade representative and is working on trade tariff policies that directly affect his former clients,” Holman said.
As economists at the Council on Foreign Relations write on Friday, despite steep tariffs slapped on imported metals, the US steel industry is not thriving. “It is reeling.”
“Steel prices have fallen back to pre-tariff levels. Employment is stagnant. The clearest sign that tariffs are not working, however, is the stock market,” Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Roca point out.
Shares of steelmakers have fallen by a whopping 22%, versus the modest 3% of the S&P 500 index.
The main reason for the decline, the economists conclude, was the downstream effects of tariffs slapped on Chinese goods. The tariffs on intermediate goods would push up prices for US-made consumer goods, and businesses would in turn produce less and buy less US steel, markets predicted.
Cash for US steel came at huge cost
US steel firms did gain a short-term benefit thanks to Trump’s policy, but it came at a huge cost to the US economy as a whole, an analysis from the Peterson Institute of International Economics (see below for link) published last month showed.
More: http://www.atimes.com/article/how-trumps-steel-tariffs-have-backfired-spectacularly/
Related: Analysis from the Peterson Institute - https://piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/steel-profits-gain-steel-users-pay-under-trumps-protectionism
#Tariffs #Steel #Economics