Sometimes tarrif are good.. though a lot of times they're not .
US steel and aluminum iant as good quality as other countries. It's great that trump wants to boost the US steel job market... But this isn't the right way to do it.
It's the same with soft wood, trump added a huge tarrif on that (not blaming trump... A lot of presidents have done it, and everytime it gets over turned in the WTO and us gets sued for millions on-top of backpay from all the tarrif they added), all our lumber mills are over capacity and fighting for as many logs as they can getz exports to us haven't slowed down at all.
All it's done was increase costs for anything wood. Our lumber is higher quality... So it still gets imported. I don't know if it's increased demand on us lumber, all I know is it hasn't slowed down demand on Canadian lumber exports at all. So I don't see what it acomplished.
Same will happen with steel / aluminum. It's funny how the labor union that was pushing for this, is trying to tell him it's going to far and he should exempt the countries that aren't a problem... But he didn't listen, or at least doesn't appear to be listening. They've warned prices are going to go up quite a bit because of this move.
All the retaliation is going to further increase costs also.
This isn't something 2-4% price increase every company does... A 2-4% per year increase is for inflation. Steel will be adjusting for inflation, + the tarrif.
All it's going to do is raise prices for everyone... It won't curb demand to us steel. Though part of me wishes it does, then Canada will have a surplus, and prices will be cheaper for us!
Trump is probably the worst person to make decisions on this stuff. It'd be like me hiring a sign company to build me a car. He has experts for a reason, choosing to ignore them because you think you know best, in a completely different field than your used to.. that's where I see the problem.
I have no problem with Increased prices, increased taxes, or anything that will make life better. I just think he's focussing on stuff he shouldn't be... Such as coal, and steel, and highly labor intensive jobs that we should get rid of anyways. The world is moving towards automation and clean power. It feels like right now, America has a death grip on the past.