alt Hacker NewsI've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please?
Replies
Not GP, but what all economists have been saying is that tariffing industrial raw materials - industrial inputs like steel, aluminum, lumber, is idiotic because the companies that make machines, cars, houses, makes a lot more money per ton of metal that is made than the mining, steel, lumber companies (etc) made making the raw materials. So, that tariff makes a winner of a very few small employers, while massively screwing way more and larger companies who employ orders of magnitude more people here (and those jobs are better jobs too).
And we are very competitive in machines, already set up to win.
It’s also fantasy that even 4 years of tariffs will convince anyone to build brand-new smelting operations, as they’re very large, capital intensive, take a while to build. And again, mostly worse jobs.
Sorry for being salty, a bit hyperbole perhaps in the 2:1 numbers.
I draft and write some code for construction companies and personally saw layoffs and not taking work due to increased material costs. The structural companies we worked with similarly did a few layoffs. The average pay of these jobs was 60k+.
Manufacturing of steel is very competitive and I haven't seen the American steel drop in price. I can't personally imagine it adding more than a few thousand jobs since it's so competitive (thin margins) and you would have to add a ton of production to add one job.
Meanwhile, the profitability of building a building is a direct feed into whether buildings get built. A building not being built directly led to laying off about 100 field guys for us.