If that is still the case, then demand for US steel is determined by infrastructure investment, not trade.
If you need nice steel, or nice case iron, the Chinese material is bad. You can't really grind any chinese cast iron that I have seen precisely, and none of the steel that I've seen from there has been clean or dimensionally accurate. For most uses, that doesn't matter, and it is totally fine. The European and American tool steel is FAR FAR better than anything that I've seen from china. I tend not to use chinese HSS for steel, since it breaks so easily.
Source: taking a break from machining steel on a bridgeport
But it is interesting to hear that quality does differ region to region based on the local needs. Again, that makes the case that imported steel vs domestic steel isn't a clear cut issue if proximity matters.
Precisely.
In the knife world, many (dare I say most) of the best tool steels used for knife making are made by Crucible Industries, a US company.
For example, the dominant steel used to make knives for bladesports[1][2] is CPM M4.
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But hey if you can get those votes in swing districts thats all that matters in the end. A few thousand steelworker votes are more important than all votes in California for POTUS2020 so expect more of the same.
I hope you appreciate that this is a very disingenuous argument. the Californian voters would get a lot more attention if they didn't all vote the same way every time.
>The US steel near me is generally higher quality than the chinese steel around here
While this may seem contradictory, it's perfectly natural on an open market.
There's always some demand for cheap, low quality steel and also some demand for the expensive, high quality steel. Knocking together a bookshelf has much different requirements than building a car; the economy needs both.
For the low quality, cheap steel, transportation costs would constitute a higher fraction of cost than for high quality, expensive one. Thus it makes sense to buy the low quality locally, while importing the high quality from far away - where the low q would not be cheap enough due to the transportation. Nonetheless the US has enough of know-how and infrastructure to produce high quality materials whenever there's enough demand.
I firmly believe the current round of tariffs are primarily a geopolitical tool - aimed mostly at imports from China, to help with geopolitical negotiations and also encourage diversification of import sources. Likewise with the recent kerfuffle with Mexico - where the proposed tariffs were used to entice them to handle the immigration crisis. To the boot, the article emphasizes the effect is not really protectionist.
For example, US agriculture like soy beans lost the China market, but China has alternatives able to pick up capacity like from Brazil. Soy Beans aren't a highly refined or engineered product, just a crop that can be grown in bulk in many places around the world. Although the tariffs may now be pushing Apple to source for other countries, there is no in place alternative for a refined, highly engineered good like an iPhone. Short term Apple is hit hard and long term may move to be impacted less, but at the end of the day consumers see higher costs due to the import tax and long term price increases as Apple has to make back their investment in a diversified supply chain. Meanwhile, Us farmers won't get that soy bean market back for many years which will have serious repercussions in that industry.
As a geopolitical tool for trade negotiation a tariff is not great, especially if misused or over used. In this case, targeted tariffs could be an extra straw on top of negotiations to push through a final deal or late stage negotiation. Instead it has been a hammer/nail situation without complexity. Think of it more as the flashy dinner with open bar to seal the deal and less a first time around the table tactic. With the Mexico tariff being a bluff given Mexico had already agreed to discuss or take actions before the tweet was even made, it is feasible the current administration could be smarter about their trade policies or at least try to add nuance to benefit their cards in negotiations. There are better ways of getting someone to the table namely targeted sanctions that don't tax you own citizens or wipe out agricultural exports. As others have said here, there is more than enough material to impose sanctions in many sectors like stolen IP/technologies, human rights violations and concerns, military posturing, and more. Simplifying trade negotiation to tariff this and tariff that is not only a poor tool and negotiation tactic but also damaging to our economy, directly and in the short and long term. We come out behind pretty much regardless of what deal is made, if any.
Only in the pathological case when most or all imports of the particular good is under the tariffs.
Just for sake of example, suppose for a second America had diversified source of steel; four distinct countries each supplying about 25% of imports. Suppose a tariff was laid on the Chinese imports only. Would the prices of other imports move up? A bit, but much, much less than the tariff. Competition does wonders.
OTOH, if the only significant source of imports is from China -as is the case right now- well yes, in that case the americans will end up paying. Luckily this also creates positive pressure to diversify sources - which in a longer run will make imports much more competitively priced. Doubly luckily, the money raised on tariffs goes into the governmental budget, which means it gets spent back into the american economy anyway (minus the inefficiency of the government).
For now. Post Brexit that may be a completely different story. It is hard for me to imagine Europe without the single market and its advantages, I recently ordered something from Japan and it has been held up in customs for weeks now.
We're going to be living with the clusterfuck for a long time, one way or another.