Canadian and Mexico Steel Tariffs

Also the price of 'steel' is a small percentage of the price of the value-added strips we buy.
 
Well, for once I am going to be able to find something that is less expensive in Canada than it is in the USA. Maybe I should start bootlegging for the US knifemakers.
 
I dont trust anyone claiming to know the economic outcome of this decision. What i do know is it is a change up, and an effort to rebalance the unfair trade deals for americans. So i support the decision no matter the outcome.

In my day job, i am a manager at a software company. When i was promoted to manager, we had a serious issue. The different teams writing software frequently were held up in their work because changes they made impacted other team's code. Nothing ever got done hardly without tremendous effort. Morale suffered, and developers werent developing, and we lost good young talent.

What i did was separate the the code into individual products, and each team developed and maintained their own product. They didnt have to worry about what impacts it had on other teams. Then i formed a small team of some experienced developers, and they worked on integration. So little trivial changes could be handled by the integration team, and wouldnt have to go back to the low level developers.

It took a lot of adjustment, and time, and even some layoffs for those opposed to the change, but we got the ball rolling again we increased market share and profit for the first time in years, and morale improved a lot.

If things arent working, you got to change what you are doing. That involves making new enemies, new friends, new partnerships new everything. It is scary, but once you make the environment suitable for the creators and the developers and the builders, guess what? They will start creating, developing, and building again.

Does the steel tariff make the environment more suitable for americans? I have no idea.
 
Randy3000 said:
I dont trust anyone claiming to know the economic outcome of this decision. What i do know is it is a change up, and an effort to rebalance the unfair trade deals for americans. So i support the decision no matter the outcome.
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Domestic steel mills raised their prices because they could. Their customers are simply passing the price increase down the line - all the way down to the end user, the fabricators. Speaking for myself, I'm also passing the price increase down the line. The net result is a huge chunk of wealth moving from the wallets of everyday Americans to giant corporations (steel mills).

Resellers of foreign steel are also passing the price increase all the way down the line. The net result is a huge chunk of wealth moving from the wallets of everyday Americans to the US government.

All thats left for us Americans to do is wait for that money to trickle down!
 
P.Brewster said:
Domestic steel mills raised their prices because they could. Their customers are simply passing the price increase down the line - all the way down to the end user, the fabricators. Speaking for myself, I'm also passing the price increase down the line. The net result is a huge chunk of wealth moving from the wallets of everyday Americans to giant corporations (steel mills).

Resellers of foreign steel are also passing the price increase all the way down the line. The net result is a huge chunk of wealth moving from the wallets of everyday Americans to the US government.

All thats left for us Americans to do is wait for that money to trickle down!
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This may be short sighted. If the tariff stays in place forever and nothing else changes, then certainly it is just yet another tax bill we all pay. If it puts pressure to get a fairer deal, then that is different. Fact is, no one knows what will happen.
 
I live in the New York city area and work ad a welding inspector. I have spoken with a well connected engineer and she brought up how cost and complexity is moving companies away from steel construction to concrete . If cost are to high people tend to fund other options.
 
The biggest problem I have with this as a strategy or policy is that the beneficiary group (domestic mills) is very small compared to the immediately impacted groups (anyone who uses steel or aluminum for domestic production).

I would rather have seen a tariff on imported value added goods. As a negotiating strategy it would have had a higher impact - everything from BMWs to Chinese Wal-Mart plastic cups. As a policy it would have had a higher positive impact (short term) on a greater number of people and possibly have inspired more on-shoring.

IE: Let the inexpensive raw materials come to the US inexpensively and we'll add value to it here.
 
kuraki said:
IE: Let the inexpensive raw materials come to the US inexpensively and we'll add value to it here.
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That is my main disagreement of the policy as it appears to be being implemented. I doubt that these tariffs were well thought out.
 
Yep. Like I said earlier no one would turn away cheap gold, or cheap oil. Inexpensive raw materials stimulate downstream production.

Expensive value add operations stimulate off shoring, regardless of why they're expensive :oops:
 
That makes sense kuraki. But, can the president arbitrarily up import tax for consumer goods, arguably not for national security? I dont know. Maybe this was his only option. Other countries refused to renegotiate, and this seems to have rustled a lot of jimmies.
 
"Trade imbalance impacts national security" done. Unless Congress wants to get a SCOTUS ruling to the contrary. However you could be right, and it was a calculated decision to prevent such a pony show.
 
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