For over a year now, Marxist economist Richard Wolff has essentially said that Trump’s trade wars with the use of tariffs is just a political act to show his supporters that he is doing something, and that it’s largely a theatrical act. Unfortunately, Trump’s theatrics are causing problems, and that means jobs and money. Alcoa, one of America’s largest manufacturers, are looking to the government for relief, or as a ‘Reason’ blog puts it “Alcoa’s request for protection from Trump’s protections.” The news of Alcoa looking for government relief comes in the wake of the Trump administration saying that it plans to give $12 billion dollars in aid to farmers that were going to see tougher times due to Trump’s trade “disputes” with China and others.
Alcoa is looking for similar exemptions similar to that of the farmers would get from the Commerce Department, so that it can import products made of aluminum that it needs from a Canadian subsidiary. “We have three important and large smelters going up the St. Lawrence River, and much of that material comes into the U.S.,” said Alcoa CEO Roy Harvey in a Bloomberg interview. “Everyone assumed as did we that there would be an exception in place for Canadian production, so that has turned out not to be the case and that is a pretty significant impact for us.”
Don’t worry Alcoa, to add on to the tariffs that have already been set, Trump has said he wants to double the tariffs for steel and aluminum from Turkey. Trump going after Turkey, a U.S. ally, goes along with a process that’s already been happening. Trump has put more tariffs on United State allies, than he has on China. Trump has placed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% tariff on aluminum, the E.U. and Canada export far more of both to the U.S. than does China.
Trump’s excuse for imposing this on allies, is based on “national security,” a reasoning that Matthew Rooney, managing director of the Bush institute, says is “absurd.” Rooney, who worked at the Stated Department, said of the tariffs on allies “It’s dangerous. It opens the door to other trading partners using national security as a justification to break their free-trade agreements.”
It’s not just “enemies” to Trump who is upset about outcomes coming from the trade war, but even allies of Trump. Douche-Senator Ron Johnson is wondering about what the fuck is going on. Sen. Johnson “is demanding that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross explain the administration's thinking on how companies can be excluded from the administration's tariffs.” Businesses in his state find the administration’s though process “arbitrary,” and that just one Wisconsin business has already lost millions of dollars.
In a letter Johnson wrote:
The Department's denial of the exclusion request has resulted in [one] Wisconsin business incurring an additional $2.6 million tariff cost that can not be used to expand production or to pay salaries of new employees. Across the country, many businesses share the same frustration about the difficult and time-consuming process.
Although I dislike Senator Ron Johnson, he is right that businesses across the country are being negatively impacted by Trump’s tariffs. In South Carolina, Element Electronics assembles televisions that use Chinese parts. Thanks to Trump’s tariffs, plans are to shut down and fire most of the workers.
Carl Kennedy, Element Electronics vice president of human resources, in a letter to the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce wrote:
The layoff and closure is a result of the new tariffs that were recently and unexpectedly imposed on many goods imported from China, including the key television components used in our assembly operations in Winnsboro.
Element Electronics is both the perfect and unfortunate example of why Richard Wolff believed that Trump’s trade war, and use of Tariffs were nothing other than a publicity stunt. Unfortunately, for people like the workers at Element Electronics, Trump’s publicity stunt will leave bodies in its wake…
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