President Donald Trump is looking to boost American manufacturing and its competitiveness with tariffs.
Last week, the nation’s 47th president moved to reinstate a 25% tariff on steel imports and lift the tariff on aluminum imports to 25%, using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
The White House has argued those tariffs will help with “revitalizing the domestic steel and aluminum industries” and bring back manufacturing.
WHO GETS HIT HARDEST BY STEEL AND ALUMINUM TARIFFS?
More recently, the Trump administration also unveiled a plan to develop reciprocal tariffs.
“It is fair to all, no other Country can complain and, in some cases, if a Country feels that the United States would be getting too high a Tariff, all they have to do is reduce or terminate their Tariff against us,” Trump said in a TruthSocial post about the plan. “There are no Tariffs if you manufacture or build your product in the United States.”
He also said it was time countries “treat us fairly – A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR AMERICAN WORKERS.”
FOX Business’ Lauren Simonetti recently spoke to Mark Andol, the founder of Made in America Store, a business that stocks its shelves solely with products made in the U.S. and that seeks to increase American manufacturing.
“I don’t have [anything] that plugs in or takes a battery out of 15,000 products, and I said we’ve been to the moon but we can’t make a toaster. We’ve got to want. You’ve got to make ‘Made in America’ important again,” he said.
Meanwhile, Flying Bison Brewing Company founder Tim Herzog told Simonetti tariffs could negatively impact costs.
“Where we are, the light delicate malt that’s the popular malt for beers right now is from Canada. Some is grown in northern New York state, sent to Canada to be malted, comes back over the border, so it’s going to get tariffs going over and it’s going to get tariffs coming back,” he said. “The price is going to go crazy.”
The number of manufacturing employees in the U.S. stood at a preliminary 12.76 million as of January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is millions fewer than the numbers seen in the ‘80s and ’90s.
There were nearly 403,000 private manufacturing establishments in the U.S. at the end of 2024’s second quarter, according to preliminary data from the BLS.
TRUMP’S TREASURY SECRETARY SHUTS DOWN ANY TARIFF CONCERNS, PRAISES ‘FRICTIONLESS GLOBAL TRADE’
Trump has been busy pursuing other tariffs since taking office as well.
He inked executive orders for 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on imports from China this month. However, his administration paused the levies focused on America’s northern and southern neighbors for one month after Canada and Mexico both agreed to take steps to heighten enforcement on their borders with the U.S.
Those were implemented in response to the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs” that the Trump administration said were coming across the borders, according to a White House press release.
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