I think this discussion is probably not belonging in an investment board , but I think it is worth noting that Trumpf Import Duty on steel US technically not an antidumping duty, since it get universally applied to all imports, regardless where they come from. The EU steel industry, as well as the Korean and Japanese are just as advanced and environmentally responsible than the US and yet the import duty applies to them as much as these dirty producers in China. So there is really no environmental angle to this, not that Trump has environmental concerns high on this agenda anyways.
Back to the investment angle, makes this US steel producers stocks now a better investment? What is the industry going to do with the windfall, just cash it in, because it is probably temporary anyways (lie former antidumping duties by Reagan and others) or use the cash to make the industry more competitive?
Do people even in the US even want to work in the steel industry? I think the salaries (which were overly generous due to union influence many years ago) are now just midling and it might be hard to attract skilled people into a very cyclical industry and a work that is still somewhat hard, despite all the progress on automation, even in the Midwest.
FWIW, the gridlock in the pipeline builds is now even worse than under Obama, Trump hasn’t been able to do anything to solve it, which I think would have more impact than the steel tariffs (which incidentally hurts the pipeline industry). I am pretty long on pipeline stocks and MLPs so I follow this very closely. |
