How Trump’s trade war is making lobbyists rich — and devastating small businesses

AlterNet logoMike Elrod voted for Donald Trump in 2016, hoping for a break from tight government oversight that his business had endured for years, which he often found unreasonable.

“There was a time when every day I dreaded opening the mail,” said Elrod, who founded a small firm in South Carolina called Eccotemp that makes energy-efficient, tankless water heaters. “The Department of Energy would put in an arbitrary rule and then come back the next day and say, ‘You’re not in compliance.’ We had no input into what was changing and when the change was taking place.”

Elrod also thought that big businesses had long been able to buy their way out of problems, either by spending lots of money on compliance or on lobbyists to look for loopholes and apply political pressure. Trump, of course, had promised to address that — to “drain the swamp.” Continue reading.

President Trump in Milwaukee says farmers are ‘over the hump’ as dairy farms continue to close in Wisconsin

President Donald Trump raised $3 million in Wisconsin cash on Friday touring Milwaukee to promote a new trade deal he says will help rebuild the country’s wounded manufacturing and agriculture industry.

But in doing so, the president downplayed the suffocation felt by Wisconsin dairy farmers because of Trump’s own tariffs.

“These are great American patriots … the farmers (said) no, it’s not like things are perfect but we’re with our president,” Trump told a crowd at Derco Aerospace on Milwaukee’s northwest side. “Some of the farmers are doing well … We’re over the hump. We’re doing really well.”

View the complete July 12 article by Molly Beck and Mary Spicuzza on The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website here.

White House expects retaliation from China, stresses ongoing talks

The Trump administration is expecting retaliation from China after imposing a new round of steep tariffs but is stressing that negotiations are ongoing.

The U.S. and China seemed poised to reach a deal on their yearlong trade war last week until President Trump raised tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports on Friday after a breakdown of negotiations.

“The problem is two weeks ago in China, there was backtracking by the Chinese,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on “Fox News Sunday.”

View the complete May 12 article by Chris Mills Rodrigo on The Hill website here.

Steel Giants With Ties to Trump Officials Block Tariff Relief for Hundreds of Firms Image

The following article by Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website August 5, 2018:

Nucor, a Charlotte-based steel manufacturer with ties to Trump officials, has challenged hundreds of requests from companies that say they need to import foreign steel components. Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Two of America’s biggest steel manufacturers — both with deep ties to administration officials — have successfully objected to hundreds of requests by American companies that buy foreign steel to exempt themselves from President Trump’s stiff metal tariffs. They have argued that the imported products are readily available from American steel manufacturers.

Charlotte-based Nucor, which financed a documentary film made by a top trade adviser to Mr. Trump, and Pittsburgh-based United States Steel, which has previously employed several top administration officials, have objected to 1,600 exemption requests filed with the Commerce Department over the past several months.

To date, their efforts have never failed, resulting in denials for companies that are based in the United States but rely on imported pipes, screws, wire and other foreign steel products for their supply chains.

View the compete article here.