The White House
Donald Trump signing the Section 232 Proclamations on Steel and Aluminum Imports.
Many progressives are befuddled about how to react to Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum. On the one hand, the move seems meant to protect jobs for hard-working people. On the other hand, it might hurt the overall economy and alienate friendly countries.
The United Steelworkers union spoke strongly, but not unequivocally, in favor of Trump’s tariffs. It opposes extending these tariffs to Canada, saying that country already engages in fair trade.
U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally imposed import duties on steel and aluminum beginning March 23, but left a few U.S. allies exempt. He then extended these tariffs to the European Union, Canada, and Mexico beginning June 1.
Roy Houseman, the legislative representative for United Steelworkers, says the tariffs are helping increase U.S steel production, from about 70 percent of operating capacity last year to the mid-70s today. Since most economists believe 80 percent capacity is needed for the long-term health of the industry, this is great news for U.S. steelworkers.
Economic chaos is not going to bring back jobs.
Yet doubt remains. “It’s a very confusing situation,” says Sujata Dey, trade campaigner for the Council of Canadians, a progressive organization. She supports tariffs that protect industry and workers but says Trump’s tariffs represent a “war against other countries and other industries.” Their purpose is to “hegemonize American power” while “not doing anything to advocate for those workers’ rights.”
Dey says it is impossible to return to a time before globalization, on a planet where “our futures are so interconnected.” Furthermore, she fears the adverse effects of a trade war, noting that “economic chaos is not going to bring back jobs.” Indeed, Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs, just announced, make that scenario more likely.
From a different perspective, the Aluminum Association, a trade industry association, reaches similar conclusions. It issued a press release arguing that broad tariffs are “unnecessary,” “disruptive,” and can hurt supply chains and alienate allies. The association believes “trade remedies should specifically target structural aluminum overcapacity in China, which is caused by rampant, illegal government subsidies in that country.”
Indeed, China currently “a highly subsidized, state-run industry,” Houseman says, with more than a billion tons of operating capacity, ten times that of the United States. China’s huge industry has thrived due to advantages that critics see as unfair. Besides dumping excess steel, China has no independent labor movement, meaning workers cannot fight to raise their wages and improve work conditions.
And China’s low environmental standards allow it to make products cheaply while pumping out harmful emissions. Indeed, some 29 percent of San Francisco’s air pollution originates in China, says Houseman. He points to Vietnam and Turkey as other countries where low wages and environmental standards create an unfair competitive advantage.
Although the European Union maintains high labor and environmental standards, the United Steelworkers union does not seek to exempt Europe from the new tariffs. Houseman argues that Europe has not worked hard enough to limit overcapacity in steel, while Canada has cooperated with the United States. He says Canada is a reliable U.S. trading partner which can be counted on to supply steel in case an international emergency cuts off supplies from other nations.
While Houseman considers tariffs necessary to protect the steel industry, he sees a long-term need to negotiate trade deals that protect workers. For him, the rise of “newer actors” including as China and Vietnam means “we’re going to have to reassess how international trade is done, and how we can better balance open markets versus more closed markets.”
More broadly, Houseman hopes the current debate “will force a discussion on the global trade regime and how we can improve to ensure that workers benefit.”
Dey, too, sees a need for better trade rules, and to reform the entire structure of world trade. She says the first question is, “How do we put in mechanisms where workers can be protected?,” which would mean changing the toothless protections in current free trade agreements.
In fact, progressives have long warned about the dangers of opening up trade without strong safeguards for labor and the environment—including, notably, during the 1999 Seattle protests. Now Trump has sought to grab the mantle of defending working people, while pursuing trade policies that don’t. Progressives, Dey says, have to “reimagine how to take back control of that discourse.”
Ethan Goffman is an environmental writer and national reporter for Mobility Lab.