Commerce Department on free trade—steel imports; the claim is China is dumping inferior steel in the USA and has caused economic damage to the U.S. steel industry. The Commerce Department will make a decision on tariffs for this steel on July 11 of this year. The decision on steel will either make or break the U.S. steel industry or what is left in this country.
There have been steel plants shut down because of the lack of tariffs to protect our steel manufacturing. One of the largest battles at this time is in the Iron Range in Minnesota. The Minnesota governor Mark Dayton is saying the dumping of steel has been going on for 10 years. This is costing mill towns to just go dark and causes thousands of working families to go broke and lose everything they worked for.
A San Francisco bridge used cheap and inferior China-made steel, which was welded together by Chinese workers. The fact that it is Chinese is not the issue, the issue is corporations buying cheaper steel from another country and cheating its own country and workers of the work. This bridge job put 6,000 workers out of a job and gave it to Chinese workers who work for far less than they deserve and cheats our workers. A lot of this steel had to be replaced.
Our trade agreements need to be overhauled for the goods, such as steel, tires, and cars. The person who is at this time leading the fight for our American worker is John Garamendi of California. He has 57 senators supporting higher tariffs, but he needs more. If the workers do not win this tariff, the rippling effect will be devastating to our country.
Also, we need to ask the GOP if they want our tanks, aircraft and Humvees made with cheap and inferior steel and so do they want to be driving over bridges made with bad steel or working in high rise buildings, hospitals, and schools constructed from inferior steel. Do we want to endanger our sick and our children just so the greedy GOP oligarchies can make more money at the expense of our people?
The greedy blood sucking parasites with bad trade policies are just one way that they are killing our workers and our country. First it was steel, now they, the privatizers, want to privatize the water in the City of Detroit. There is no end to the attacks by the greedy soulless money grubbers.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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