Donald Trump is wrong about trade tarriffs

A former steel worker wrote an opinion letter to the St. Louis Post Dispatch  ~ an echo letter from Missouri

Higher prices won't bring back steel industry

St Louis MO  ~ My first job was in one of many steel plants in metro St. Louis. 

As the ’70s waned, foreign governments sensed a chink in the U.S. industrial dominance. 

Using our foreign aid, university expertise and the opportunity to build new state-of-the-art-facilities replacing war-damaged ones, governments exploited and subsidized their fledgling domestic steel industries to our detriment. By contrast, U.S. steel makers received no subsidies for massive funds needed to modernize, control pollution and improve safety.

If there was a time to pass serious protectionist tariffs, it was then. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan heeded the advice that a tariff or trade war would only hurt us. They were wrong then, but only because we were the only market, and it is the market that determines the source and price of goods, not the suppliers. That was a time and place where the U.S. could set the rules and perhaps win the war on America’s middle class.

President Donald Trump’s rant-driven diversion into trade tariffs and trade wars is nothing but fantasy. 

Granite City Steel, Laclede Steel, Scullin Steel, Sterling Steel and the original Alton Steel are all shuttered. 

Over two generations of hard-working, semi-skilled workers have retired. In modern, more automated facilities, steel-making remains physically hard, hot, dangerous work. Specifically needed skill sets are passed from journeyman to apprentice not found in classes. Those teachers are gone, and the interest in building and operating mammoth, capital- and energy-intensive, polluting facilities is nonexistent.

Other than another empty campaign sound bite for the still-disenfranchised base, what good comes from higher steel and aluminum prices?  David Sager • Hazelwood MO