Foreign Countries Are Steeling Our Jobs, and Joe Biden is Enabling It

President Trump is the real ally of American workers, and will restore America’s manufacturing base once again.

Joe Biden recently made a bold pronouncement in front of the United Steelworkers Union in Pennsylvania that he will explore tripling Section 232 steel tariffs on Chinese steel imports and launch an investigation into China’s exploitation of our domestic shipbuilding industry. Hey, steelworkers: do not be fooled by Joe Biden’s slick talk. Biden has done nothing but unravel President Trump’s Buy American policies his entire first term which restored our country’s steel and aluminum manufacturing base and U.S. shipbuilding industry. When President Trump is elected in November, he will take the strong, sweeping, action we all need, to crack down on countries who are stealing your jobs in real time on Joe Biden’s watch, and ensure that our ships are all American-made, as he’s done before.

Biden’s war on the steel and aluminum industries began during his time as Vice President. Steel imports as a percentage of total U.S. consumption skyrocketed from 22.7% in 2009 to 30.1% in 2016. Aluminum imports, on the other hand, rose from 41% to 53% between 2015 and 2016—one year’s time. To fix this, President Trump invoked Section 232 tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum in March 2018. As a result, $15 billion in domestic investment was poured into the steel and aluminum industries, 60 new manufacturing projects or expansions were initiated, and thousands of manufacturing jobs were created. Also, foreign steel imports decreased from 30.1% in 2016 to 21.8% in 2020—even despite the Chinese Communist Party Virus—and foreign aluminum imports decreased from 59% in 2017 to 22% by the end of 2019.

As president, Joe Biden has destroyed the power and effectiveness of President Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs by granting repeated exemptions to them, resulting in soaring imports. In 2021, Joe Biden suspended his steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, who was found to have been threatening U.S. national security with excessive imports into our market. In February 2022, he suspended steel tariffs on Japan—who has a long history of  illegally dumping steel into our country and harming our workers—in exchange for a tariff-rate quota (TRQ), allowing them to sell us up to 1.25 million metric tons of steel annually free of charge. In June 2022, the United Kingdom, too, was granted a generous TRQ followed by an indefinite exemption to all steel tariffs for Ukraine, on top of the billions in foreign aid Joe has given them. As a result, U.S. imports of iron and steel surged from $19 billion in 2021 to $45 billion by the end of 2022.

Joe Biden also refuses to defend our workers against Mexico’s predatory trade practices which are shutting down our steel plants as we speak. On Joe’s watch, U.S. imports of Mexican steel have been running at almost 800% above historic levels seen between 2015 and 2017. Mexico has been reclassifying their steel conduit exports under other tariff codes to illegally dump excessive volumes of steel into our country at 25% below U.S. market price, in violation of the USMCA. This is devastating for U.S. steel manufacturers like Zekelman Industries, one of the largest private-owned U.S. steel companies, which had to shut down its plant in California as a result. Worst of all, the most Joe Biden has done to solve the problem is engage in a toothless “dialogue” with the Mexican government.

Joe Biden has also neglected the American shipbuilding industry for decades. As Vice President, Joe Biden allowed the number of our U.S. flagged ships to drop a staggering 22% from 217 in 2009 to just a mere 169 when President Trump took office. U.S. shipbuilders like the Philly Shipyard were down to just 80 employees as a result. Thanks to President Trump’s commitment to America’s shipbuilders, companies like the Philly Shipyard won federal contracts to construct new training ships for our merchant mariners, which created over a thousand jobs.

Lastly, Joe Biden has granted Buy America waivers for America’s shipbuilding industry, encouraging foreign countries start supplying components for our shipbuilding industry once again. In August 2023, Biden signed a Wavier of Buy America Requirements for De Minimis Costs and Small Grants, which enables federal contractors to purchase and utilize foreign materials—including steel and iron—to build federally-funded transportation projects below $500,000 in value. Even Democrat Senators like Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) were outraged and sent a letter to Biden emphasizing that he is harming manufacturing workers in Wisconsin and discouraging the use American-made products and workers.

President Trump was the only president in decades to create thousands of jobs in the iron, steel, and metals manufacturing industry prior to the Virus, and the industry has still not recovered under Biden because of his Buy Foreign policies. Foreign countries like Japan smell blood as a result of his weakness, and have been emboldened to attempt to take over our largest steel producers like U.S. Steel, which makes airplanes and ships for our military—something that would never happen on President Trump’s watch.

When President Trump is elected, he undoubtedly will reverse these harmful policies and already pledged to halt state-backed Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel. In addition, he should revoke all of Joe Biden’s Section 232 tariff exemptions on steel and aluminum; hold Mexico accountable for violating the USMCA and shutting down U.S. steel plants; enforce the Jones Act and make generous federal grant programs available to U.S. shipbuilders; and reverse all Buy American waivers for federal shipbuilding contracts. Without steel, aluminum, and a strong manufacturing base, we have no national defense, and no economic security. President Trump is determined to restore both, to make our country the manufacturing powerhouse it should be.

S. Karol Paul has an extensive background in trade and manufacturing policy and is a contributor to Peter Navarro’s Taking Back Trump’s America

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