Report: American Steel Industry 'Very Happy' with Trump's Tariffs

Reliance Steel & Aluminum (RS) hauled in record sales, thanks to an 18% spike in prices. Nucor (NUE) recorded the best second quarter in its history. Its profit more than doubled.

“All in all, we’re very happy with tariffs,” Nucor CEO John Ferriola told analysts earlier this month.

American steel workers have also previously thanked Trump for imposing the tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, as Breitbart News has chronicled.

Bronson Jones, who co-owns Banner Metals, recently told the New York Times’ Nelson Schwartz that he sees the tariffs and Trump’s moves to hold China accountable on trade as a benefit to the American economy in the long term.

“I’m not looking at what’s best for Banner right now. I’m looking at what’s best for the national economy,” Jones said. “The U.S. has been taken advantage of for too long.”

Trump’s tariffs have delivered gains for the U.S. steel industry — which had been decimated by decades of free trade. Last week, Trump visited Granite City, Illinois, where the former steel town announced that, thanks to the president’s protective tariffs, it was rehiring at least 800 American workers who had previously lost their jobs to foreign competitors.

For decades, the U.S. has maintained a trade deficit in steel products, importing vastly more steel than the country is exporting. Trump says he wants to change this trend with the implementation of his tariffs.

“In 2014, U.S. imports of steel products reached a near-record high of 40.3 million metric tons, only topped by the 41.3 million metric tons imported in 2006,” a federal report notes of the country’s trade imbalance in steel which has cost millions of American workers their jobs in the industry.

Researchers with the Coalition for a Prosperous America say for every billion dollars of net imports to the U.S., 6,000 American jobs are eliminated in the economy.