Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 102 of the 5th edition (2020) of Douglas Irwin’s superb book Free Trade Under Fire (footnote deleted; link added):

When the Trump administration decided in 2018 to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imported steel, the same employment tradeoffs emerged…. The steel industry employs about 147,000 workers, while there are roughly 2.3 million workers in steel-using industries. The tariffs cost Ford Motor Company a billion dollars in added costs of production because the tariffs made American steel the most expensive in the world. The higher steel costs also hurt Caterpillar and John Deere, as well as machinery producers. One study suggested that, as a result of the steel tariff, the number of jobs in the iron and steel industry and the fabricated metal products industry would increase by 44,000, but there would be 17,000 fewer jobs in motor vehicles and parts and 209,000 fewer jobs in construction.