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For full transparency, I’m not a fan of tariffs. I know that in the end it’s not the target countries or their companies but rather the American consumers who pay for these tariffs in the form of higher prices. It’s also American countries who rely on imports to thrive that get hurt. An example of the latter is Element Electronics, the last US assembler of televisions.
— Element Electronics (@ElementTVs) August 7, 2018
According to The Hill, layoffs are planned to start in October.
South Carolina manufacturer says it’s closing plant over Trump tariffs
Element said “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,” in a letter to the state’s Department of Employment and Workforce obtained by the local paper.
The company said in the letter that it hopes the closure will be temporary and added that it could reopen the plant in “three to six months, but we cannot predict this with any certainty at this time.”
This puts the administration in a pickle. Perhaps it’s better to look at it as a catch-22. They could exclude the parts needed by Element from the tariff list and save the jobs. Doing so could signal to other US companies affected by the tariffs to threaten closures and layoffs in hopes the White House will also exclude the parts and materials they import.
If the President sticks to his guns, he will gain the benefits associated with tariffs such as expanded use of domestic materials and the potential for jobs to be created in America. Of course, he’ll also have to face media backlash for every negative effect of the tariffs, including Element Electronics’ challenge.
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In the real world, there are no benefits to tariffs.
Take Trump’s steel tariffs for example. Manufacturers started using more and more imported steel for several reasons:
1) Union strikes would frequently delay shipments or destroy US Manufacturer equipment resulting in orders being canceled or shipped late.
2) Union demands for wages drove up the cost of production for American steel to non-competitive levels.
3) US steel quality was not adequate to many construction specifications.
4) US steel prices kept rising meaning that a price quote received before bidding a job may not be honored after the job was won.
Now Trump’s tariffs have effectively guaranteed a minimum price for US Steel, which means that unions will now begin their cycle of strikes and increasing demands again or they will will strike and be responsible for delayed/canceled steel orders (and the associated downstream projects like bridges, buildings, pipelines, etc. as well as manufacturing layoffs due to lack of steel supply.
It was precisely because of union “control” of worker productivity and decreasing quality that US steel lost out to imported steel in the first place.
Once Trump is out of office and his tariffs are removed, the steel companies (and their unions) that will have come to depend on the artificially inflated (government-tariff-supported) prices for their products will once again have to either compete globally or face the shutdown of the US steel plants again. Trump’s tariffs are nothing more than a gimmick being used to bail out US Steel Unions. There is no national security angle to Trump’s tariffs at all.