In 2016, Trump wrote a big check during the campaign, promising to bring a new dawn to the struggling American steel industry. Midwestern states such as Michigan, with the dream of new job opportunities coming, helped him in the general election. Win.
Four years have passed in a blink of an eye. Has the once vision of reshaping Michigan got its wish? of course not! The Great Lakes Works, once one of the largest steel plants in the state, closed its steelmaking operations, leaving 1,250 workers unemployed. Just one year before the layoffs in June of this year, due to the deterioration of the market environment, the plant owner, US Steel Corporation, cancelled its plan to invest $600 million in upgrading.
Don’t have Trump’s favorite tariff protection code? In March 2018, in order to protect US steel companies from competition from foreign steel companies, Trump ordered a 25% tariff. In addition, in order to revitalize the US steel industry, he also promised to boost steel demand through large-scale investment in roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
However, the market has its own laws. The tariff stick is not something you can play well if you want to play. In fact, not only did the tariffs fail to revitalize the US steel industry, they also weakened the demand of the US auto industry and other steel consumers in Michigan because of the increase in steel prices. And the infrastructure construction pie, at best, just stays on paper, and there has never been a trace of implementation.
Painting cakes can't satisfy their hunger, and Trump is finally going to eat for himself. As we all know, Michigan's economy is heavily dependent on the steel and automobile industries, and both industries are sluggish, then can Trump still get the votes he needs in this swing state? There is no doubt about this. Democrats vowed to regain the votes of blue-collar workers who lost to Trump four years ago, which was originally a key factor in Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the last election. At that time, Trump won Michigan State by less than one percent of the state's votes.
Time has passed. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of voters about to vote in Michigan from September 29 to October 6, Biden leads Trump by 8 percentage points in Michigan, an increase compared to a few weeks ago. Has a leading edge. What's worse for Trump is that not only Michigan is blind to the eye, but the elections in other swing states are not optimistic. Political analysts say that in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the two "swing states", the competition for votes for manufacturing workers will be equally fierce. Manufacturing workers have always been members of unions, and they voted for the Democratic Party.
According to data from the US Department of Labor, before the outbreak of the new crown led to a wider economic recession, the national steel industry has been layoffs, and the number of employees now is 1,900 fewer than when Trump took office.
Tariffs have failed to boost overall employment in the steel industry, but they have raised costs for major steel consumers and reduced job opportunities for companies including General Motors and Ford Motor. According to a study conducted by Harvard University and the University of California, as of the end of last year, steel and aluminum tariffs caused at least 75,000 jobs in metal-using industries to be lost nationwide. They estimate that, overall, by mid-2019, the trade war has caused a net loss of 175,000 jobs in the US manufacturing industry.
Picking up a rock and hitting one's own feet, this sentence is not a joke!
