Steel Tariffs and Climate Change
What happens to the climate when you impose tariffs that make a major change in the flow of the 36 million tons of steel that the U.S. imports each year? As discussed here, and as one might expect, it depends on the source of the steel.
It’s kind of like the environmental impact of electric vehicles: the effect ranges from incredibly positive to fairly negative; it depends on precisely what happens when you plug in your car in a certain location, at a certain time of day, and the amount of renewables on the grid at the time.
Craig,
The President is keeping his promise to restructure the US economy. Rightly or wrongly he promised the electorate to restructure American trade and industry to make the US more competitive and protect US jobs and industry from ‘unfair’ competition.
It’s a difficult task. The complexity and consequences of moving from growing ‘free trade’ to a partially protected economy are very difficult to predict and getting the balance right involves good judgement, flexibility and compromise.
As for the environmental effects of a resurgent US steel industry, the US is better placed than most nations to deploy technology to mitigate harmful environmental emissions.