. . .
When you aggregate all those price increases across the 10 million washers sold annually in the United States, consumers will collectively pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for each job supposedly created or saved. Which is many multiples of what factory workers typically earn.
And it’s not even clear how safe their jobs are at this point, given the rest of Trump’s trade agenda. After all, his tariffs didn’t stop with washing machines.
Those metal tariffs have left steel prices more than 50 percent higher in the United States than they are in China or Europe. This is bad news for U.S. companies that purchase steel — including to manufacture washing machines, which are essentially big steel boxes.
Perhaps worse, our furious trading partners are now striking back by placing new tariffs on U.S. goods. Among the products that both the European Union and Canada have targeted for retaliation?
You guessed it: U.S.-made washing machines.
Ohio factory workers thought they’d be big winners from Trump’s unorthodox trade approach. But when all’s said and done, it could be, at best, a wash.
