I Hate It When I’m Right

A week ago, I commented with qualified praise for the Obama Administration as they signed a bill to reduce tariffs on imported items.  I had hoped that when I later spoke with my co-workers I would find the bill included Magnesium Alloy which has a job killing tariff practically doubling the price at which U.S. Manufacturers can by the metal.

To my dismay, I spoke with our V.P. of Sales today about this issue, and he indeed confirmed that Magnesium Alloy would continue to be protected by tariff,  “Only non-controversial raw materials were included in that bill.”

So, if any company in the U.S. was also producing the commodity and filed a complaint, it was ‘controversial’ and the tariffs remain.

Bottom line.  This is a do-nothing bill that sounds good on the headline, but doesn’t really help many manufacturers in the long run.  If there’s no one in the U.S. making Bullcrapium, then we’ll take the tariff off which does reduce the cost to those manufacturers.  But, if there is a U.S. competitor for the product, we leave the tariff on, and the price for the raw material is so high that it’s cheaper to manufacture from the raw material outside of the U.S. and import the finished product.

Where are the jobs?  Outside of the U.S.