US slaps Chinese steelmakers with 522% tax to protect home production: Commerce Department moves to stop Beijing ‘dumping’ cheap steel abroad. This is funny considering everyone’s complaining about Trump’s threat of slapping tariffs on China so look what Obama does. We’d also like to know who makes steamship containers in the United States? I met a woman in Kansas City years ago (same date as the OKC bombing 4/19/1995) who was closing her steamship container manufacturing company down because she couldn’t compete with the Chinese, Koreans and Italians (yes the Italians).
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Reagan did this back in the 80's to give Harley Davidson an equal footing in the big bike market. Japan was dumping their bikes here at such stupid low prices that Harley was going out of business. It also didn't help that AMF had run them into the ground, with poor quality control and manufacturing. When Willie G Davidson put together a group to buy the company back, they asked for a little help, and time, to get things up and running, and restore their good name. They didn't ask for government money, bailouts, or anything else, just a level playing field. Reagan agreed, and taxed only the imports that were in the same engine size range as Harley's products. They used the time to rework their products and by the time the tariffs expired, they were competitive again.
One of the first things Obama did for his donors in the tire industry was to slap a tax on Chinese tires.
Now, "true conservatives" will say that Trump will do the same thing. IMHO, they are wrong. Trump is not going to specifically target his special cronies industry. He is going to level the overall field. This will allow our companies to compete overseas.
I know that "true conservatives" think they know what free trade means but they do not. I will bet that "true conservatives" have never been involved, much less run, international sales for companies. It is not fair. For example, a company I was an executive for a company that had a niche market in machines that did one process in the fabricating printed circuit boards. Our equipment had several USA and international patents on the process. We sold three machines into Japan in the 80s. six months later Seki had copied the machine exactly and we no longer sold machines into Japan. Seki did, to the tune of over 30 machnes. It has only gotten worse with China. This has to stop or our children will only be waiters, maids, and fast food workers.
"Steamship?" Who uses that word in 2016? I know that's what they called non-sailing ships in the 19th century but...
Actually, that's what the shipping companies call themselves.