This week President Donald Trump announced that he was preparing to sign documents to impose a tariff on imported steel and aluminum. The action is meant to strengthen the steel industry in the United States. From The New York Times:
President Trump said on Thursday that he will impose stiff tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, thwarting some of his top pro-trade advisers and rattling stock markets as the prospect of a global trade fight loomed.
Mr. Trump said he would formally sign the trade measures next week and promised they would be in effect “for a long period of time.” The measures would impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
Steelworkers at the ArcelorMittal plant in Conshohocken (Plymouth Township) have been the focus of or name-dropped in a handful of prominent news articles since the September 2017 announcement that the steel company would idle a portion of the plant. Approximately 150 employees would lose their jobs.
Here are about or mentioning the plant and its workers:
We emailed a spokesperson for ArcelorMittal, Mary Beth Holdford, to ask if the news of the tariffs would change the plan to idle a portion of the Conshohocken plant. We were told that it would not.
More to come.