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Eric Boehlert – Trump is about to drive America’s largest nail maker out of business

Summary:
America's largest nail manufacturer may be forced out of business by Labor Day.Trump's steel tariffs are backfiring. He is trying to protect the American steel industry but an American nail manufacturer says says it will go out of businesses unless it gets cheap Chinese steel to compete with, you guessed it, cheap Chinese imported nails.And Harley Davidson says it will be affected by Europe's retaliatory trade tariffs so it might move its production abroad which would be a shame as much of the prestige of owning a Harley Davidson is the genuine made in America label, I would have thought.Combined, these industries stand to lose hundreds more jobs than the steel tariffs are protecting. KVRepublicans have been warning the White House all year that Trump's reckless trade war is going to hit

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America's largest nail manufacturer may be forced out of business by Labor Day.

Trump's steel tariffs are backfiring. He is trying to protect the American steel industry but an American nail manufacturer says says it will go out of businesses unless it gets cheap Chinese steel to compete with, you guessed it, cheap Chinese imported nails.

And Harley Davidson says it will be affected by Europe's retaliatory trade tariffs so it might move its production abroad which would be a shame as much of the prestige of owning a Harley Davidson is the genuine made in America label, I would have thought.

Combined, these industries stand to lose hundreds more jobs than the steel tariffs are protecting. KV

Republicans have been warning the White House all year that Trump's reckless trade war is going to hit red states hard, with real job losses, and the evidence is pouring in.

America's largest nail manufacturer, Mid-Continent Nail, located in a Missouri county that voted 79 percent for Trump, says it is shedding hundreds of jobs and will likely have to shut down by Labor Day.

The company, which produces half the nails manufactured in the U.S., uses imported material to produce the carpentry nails, and since Trump slapped a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum imports, the company has had to boost its prices. When they did that, sales immediately plummeted.

The company recently laid off 60 of its 500 employees and expects to lay off another 200 in the coming weeks.

One of the company's three plants in Popular Bluff, Missouri, has already been shuttered.

"It's not just us. There will be many, many companies that will pay a price for this," George Skarich, Mid-Continent Nail's vice president of sales and marketing, told the Washington Post. "I'm disappointed in Trump. We didn't see this coming."

And that's why Harley-Davidson, facing retaliatory tariffs from Europe, announced on Monday that it will be sending U.S. jobs overseas because of the huge hit it's taking, thanks to Trump.

According to Harley-Davidson, the tariffs would cost the company an additional $2,200 for each motorcycle it built in the U.S. and then exported to Europe.

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Eric Boehlert - Trump is about to drive America's largest nail maker out of business


Mike Norman
Mike Norman is an economist and veteran trader whose career has spanned over 30 years on Wall Street. He is a former member and trader on the CME, NYMEX, COMEX and NYFE and he managed money for one of the largest hedge funds and ran a prop trading desk for Credit Suisse.

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