On Thursday, August 23, U.S. Steel announced that it would be investing a minimum of $750 million to modernize and enhance its 110-year-old flagship plant in Gary, Indiana.
“There are no committed new jobs at this point, but the project will retain the more than 3,800 jobs in Gary,” said Abby Gras, a spokesperson for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The 3,800 jobs in the Gary plant will be protected as a result of the new investment that comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel imports.
Back on March 1, President Trump announced a 25-percent tariff on foreign-made steel and aluminum.
U.S. Steel President and CEO David Burritt attributed the good news to President Trump’s trade and tariffs policies, stating, “We are experiencing a renaissance at U.S. Steel.” According to Burritt, the $750 million investment will improve the environment performance of their Gary plant and bolster the company’s competitiveness.
The increased productivity from American steel plants and manufacturers such as U.S. Steel, will help reduce America’s reliance on foreign subsidized steel imports, much to the benefit of both U.S. national security and American workers.
In addition to the steel industry, other winners in Trump’s trade and tariff policies include American-made aluminum.
On Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin celebrated the expansion of an aluminum mill in Hawesville, Kentucky. “We have all of the ingredients to succeed and all we needed was the fairly-traded market,” said Jesse Gary, the executive vice president of Century Aluminum, who owns the Hawesville mill, the largest producer of aluminum in the United States.
He also credited the Trump tariffs for allowing Century Aluminum to revitalize a derelict part of their mill. “That gave us the fairly-traded environment we needed in order to restart those lines and so it’s as a direct result of that,” Gary said.
Earlier this year, U.S. Steel also announced the creation of 800 new jobs as a result of restarting two of its blast furnace plants in Granite City, Illinois.
In March 2018, U.S. Steel announced it was bringing back 500 jobs to restart its Granite City Works’ blast furnace “B” and steelmaking operations. And on June 5, 2018, the company announced that it would be restarting a second blast furnace at its Granite City steelmaking plant.
“The Company will hire around 300 new employees for the restart of blast furnace ‘A’ that will support increased shipments beginning in the fourth quarter,” U.S. Steel stated in a press release at the time.
These jobs had been previously destroyed as a result of decades of past U.S. presidential administration’s “free trade” policies that decimated American domestic manufacturing, including wiping out whole industries, and severely debilitating America’s national defense by increasing its dependence on foreign-sourced metals and resources.
Such policies can be traced back to when Congress abdicated its constitutional tariff powers under Article I, Section 8 to the Executive Branch through the passage of the Trade Agreements Act of 1934.
Since then, through extensions of that unconstitutional act and subsequent Deep State internationalist subterfuge, American presidents — both Democrats and Republicans — have continuously placed the international goals of freeing world trade and establishing world government ahead of America’s interest, workers, and national sovereignty. President Trump has been the exception — much to the dismay of the Deep State and globalists who fear he is upending their Global Trade Order (click here and here) established at the end of World War II.
In theory at least, free trade between countries is the ideal situation — with consumers getting more inexpensive, higher-quality products and each country specializing in certain products. But theory doesn’t match reality. First, a country cannot run trade deficits eternally and still maintain a modern standard of living. Second, the WTO and so-called free trade pacts pick winners and losers, without regard to trade rules that are supposed to apply, and some countries such as China not only subsidize goods with the intention of putting competitors out of business in other countries, they actively steal patents to avoid development costs and also ignore the grave damage they do to the environment. Third, some products such as steel are important to a country’s national defense, and they must be protected and nurtured. Too, Third World countries will never be able to compete with developed ones if they don’t have time to bring their industries up to a stage where they are competitive.
While tariffs are taxes on consumers — and so we should have as few as possible, and only what is necessary — Trump’s tariffs have clearly been a monkey wrench in the works of the Deep State’s goals for world government. For a more-lasting solution, however, Congress would be wise to look to the Constitution and reclaim its constitutional tariff powers.
A Congress wielding its rightful Article I, Section 8 tariff powers and kept under the accountability of an informed electorate would be less likely to place future Americans under the yoke and bondage of global government-making “free trade” schemes. A constitutionalist Congress would reject placing internationalist interests ahead of the interests of its own constituents who voted them in to office.
One organization committed to building an informed electorate, expanding education about the Constitution, and increasing awareness of globalist “free trade” schemes is The John Birch Society.
For decades, The John Birch Society has opposed this “Free Trade Agenda” of globalists-managed trade agreements, which have included the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the 1994 creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), President Obama’s regional Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), and the current ongoing renegotiations to modernize NAFTA.
One way The John Birch Society has sought to stop the New World Order and its quest for world government is by promoting U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations (UN) and World Trade Organization (WTO), through its Get US Out! action project campaign. All of the aforementioned globalist “free trade” schemes and even recent bilateral trade agreements have all been made under the auspices of the WTO, which in turn is a creation of the United Nations.
As the Deep State continues to be exposed by news outlets such as The New American magazine and by grassroots organizations building an informed electorate such as The John Birch Society, America will continue to win. Jobs once destroyed as a result of globalist “free trade” schemes will gradually return, and most importantly, the United States will continue to prosper as a free and sovereign nation.
U.S. Steel’s new $750 million investment to revitalize its Gary plant and Century Aluminum’s expansion to its Hawesville mill offer a positive outlook for America’s future.
Image: Screenshot of logo of U.S. Steel
