, Columnist
Steel and Aluminum Jobs Don't Add Up to Much
President Trump's tariffs would help two smallish industries and hurt some much bigger ones.
And here we have a steelmaker ... in Russia.
Photographer: Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty ImagesSteel tariffs work! That is, when President George W. Bush levied tariffs of 8 percent to 30 percent on steel imports in March 2002, it did seem to have a detectable positive impact on steel industry employment.
For about a year after the tariff was imposed, steel industry employment stopped falling. Yay! Then the decline resumed amid a brewing global trade battle. Bush lifted the tariffs in December 2003. A few months after that, steel industry employment stopped falling again. So ... maybe tariffs don't work so well. And in any case, the number of jobs involved -- a few thousand amid total nonfarm payroll employment of about 130 million -- was quite small.