Should-Read: Gillian Tett: Donald Trump’s tariffs would do little for American workers

Should-Read: Gillian Tett: Donald Trump’s tariffs would do little for American workers: “Robots will be the real winners if US president goes ahead with curbs on steel imports… https://www.ft.com/content/cd7df564-5c15-11e7-b553-e2df1b0c3220

…Another week, another wave of sabre-rattling from the Trump administration over trade…. Now the focus is on steel…. Tariffs would hurt American-based companies in direct and indirect ways. The transport equipment sector would suffer most, followed by the leather, petroleum, textiles, machinery and electrical equipment sectors…. If transport companies, such as carmakers, wanted to absorb the cost of these putative tariffs to keep their products competitive, they would have to cut wage costs by 6 per cent; for other industrial groups, a reduction of 2 and 4 per cent is needed. This might imply lower wages. But the more likely response is that companies would just replace workers with more robots…. Laura Tyson calculates… that robots have displaced 400,000 US manufacturing jobs each year in the past couple of decades—which has resulted in the manufacturing workforce falling by a third since 1997, even though output is at record high levels…