Trade War: Tariffs Threaten 283 Missouri Industries

MISSOURI — Bloomberg reported last week that President Trump plans to impose tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports. According to the report, Trump wants to move ahead with the tariffs as soon as a public comment period on the proposal ends Sept. 6 and China has reportedly said it will respond with retaliatory tariffs on about $60 billion of U.S. imports.

Those tariffs, a consequence of the president's growing trade war, disproportionately threaten parts of the country that propelled Trump to the White House, according to an analysis by Axios.

According to that analysis, American companies that employ about 11 million workers are threatened by these tariffs. As Axios describes, “industries affected by the brinkmanship are mostly concentrated in rural, deeply red, already-struggling parts of the country, with political consequences for Trump and Republicans in 2018 and beyond.”

Axios’ analysis, which looks at both current and threatened tariffs, shows that hundreds of industries in Missouri will be affected, including 49 in St. Louis County alone. Others are scattered across the state's more rural counties, 238 in total. They include environmental control manufacturing, bottling, sanitation goods manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, sawmills, commercial printing, boat building, mining and even wineries.

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Every Missouri county, all but three of which voted for Trump, has at least one industry that will be impacted. Barry County, for example, which Trump won with more than 78 percent of the vote, has 283 times the national concentration of window and door manufacturing, meaning it could be vastly more affected than other counties across the country. Soybean farmers in Bates County and tool and die manufacturers in Laclede County can likewise expect to see detrimental impacts to their livelihoods.

Read more via Axios.

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