In April, President Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise and ordered the Commerce Department to conduct a “Section 232” review of steel imports. A provision of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Section 232 authorizes the gov-ernment to take action to limit imports of products if they threaten national security.
MILWAUKEE—There are a lot of good reasons for Harley-Davidson to open an assembly plant in Thailand, and few, mostly jingoistic, ones against it, but the irony is that the quintessential American motorcycle maker is going abroad because it is being punished by the same sort of trade rules it once championed.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed an executive order April 29 establishing a new White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy (OTMP). The mission of the OTMP is to defend and serve American workers and domestic manufacturers while advising the president on policies to increase economic growth, decrease the trade deficit, and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing and defense industrial bases.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump ordered on Friday a comprehensive study to identify every form of “trade abuse” that contributes to U.S. deficits with foreign countries. “The theft of American prosperity will end,” Trump said at an Oval Office ceremony announcing the study, along with another directive to step up enforcement of existing trade penalties.
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to bolster U.S. manufacturing; slash the corporate tax rate; build a wall on our southern border to keep out illegal immigrants; and invest more than $1 trillion to upgrade the nation’s aging infrastructure.
MESA, AZ--Apple Inc. is seeking permission to conduct high-tech manufacturing and to build data-center server gear in a facility here, according to a notice published last week by the US federal government. A notification published in the Federal Register on Jan. 16 said Apple was looking for approval from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board to produce "finished products" in a special zone that exempts it from customs duty payments.
Our government could do a lot more to level the playing field for manufacturing. While the Reshoring Initiative does not support individual candidates, we do recommend policies that will bring manufacturing back from offshore, and we try to document candidate positions on these issues.
Although I’m a fan of science fiction, I have to laugh at utopian predictions of global—even universal—unity and harmony. Clearly, these authors don’t read the news. In 2015, no less than 55 armed conflicts raged worldwide.
WASHINGTON—Producers in China and six other countries sold cold-rolled steel at unfairly low prices in the U.S. market and will be taxed as much as 266 percent on the price.
