美国国家公共电台 NPR Trump's Tariffs Worry A Small Steel City In Pennsylvania

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We're going to visit a small town in Western Pennsylvania now that's worried about losing steel jobs. Several hundred people work for NLMK in Farrell, Penn. This is a Russian-owned steel mill that uses Russian steel, and so it's being hit by a 25 percent tariff¹. This mill is in an area that backed President Trump². And so its fate really speaks to the complicated politics around the president's trade policies. Here's NPR political correspondent Asma Khalid.

ASMA KHALID, BYLINE³: Dan Moore is one of those guys who voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. But he became enamored with Donald Trump's promise to bring back jobs and renegotiate trade deals.

DAN MOORE: Right now there's a pretty fair amount of uncertainty⁴ with the steel tariffs⁵.

KHALID: I meet Moore near the entrance to the NLMK steel mill about an hour before he's got to get to work inside. He's wearing a Donald Trump hat, a souvenir he picked up at the inauguration⁶. He gives the president an A-plus on a lot of things, but he's not so sure about tariffs.

MOORE: Tariffs are - they may help some people, but they're going to hurt a lot of people, too. I don't know exactly how you balance that.

KHALID: NLMK, where he works, depends on steel from Russia. And it wants to import 3 million tons a year.

MOORE: It's kind of like - OK, well, we need tariffs. But when it starts to impact the company where you work for, now you're like, whoa. Wait a minute. Time out. (Laughter) Let's take a closer look at this.

KHALID: Do you at all regret your vote?

MOORE: No, I don't regret my vote 'cause I certainly think President Trump was the better candidate.

KHALID: Plus, he thinks the president is receptive to feedback.

MOORE: I have plans to write a letter to President Trump or maybe a personal phone call.

KHALID: Moore says, if he can get the president's ear, maybe he could convince him to give NLMK an exemption⁷. The company officially applied⁸ for an exemption with the Commerce Department in March, but that application is still pending⁹.

Moore says he thought tariffs would help the country. But now he's just nervous about his own future.

MOORE: You know, every day, I have to try to stay focused on my job. But you have that question in your mind - how much longer do I have before I get my pink slip?

KHALID: As we walk, we pass boarded-up storefronts and dilapidated houses. Up the road from NLMK, I meet Farrell's city manager, Michael Ceci. He sounds glum¹⁰. He says he doesn't know if the company can stay in business with a 25 percent steel tariff. And if it doesn't, that would crush the city financially.

MICHAEL CECI: I would - not figuratively but literally¹¹...

(SOUNDBITE OF KEYS CLINKING)

CECI: ...Leave the keys on the desk. The lights will get turned off, and the power doesn't get paid. And that's it.

KHALID: Ceci says a quarter of the city's revenue comes directly from an NLMK through property taxes and income taxes. And he is frustrated¹² because Farrell has had a hard time, and now life in this city finally seemed to be getting a tad better with NLMK.

CECI: We've gotten 700 great jobs, high-paying jobs at this mill. It's really helping¹³. It's a spark of life. And now you're going to change the rules again and make us start over again.

KHALID: NLMK's argument is that it can't find enough steel to work with in the U.S. So it imports it from Russia to produce coils in Pennsylvania. But it's an argument that's up for debate. Tariff supporters say it's true. Maybe right now there is not enough domestic steel, but that's changing precisely¹⁴ because of the tariffs. And critics are skeptical¹⁵ NLMK would really shut down. They say the company is exaggerating the supply problems because it wants to continue buying cheaper steel from Russia. In a statement to NPR, the company strongly denied it's doing this. The Commerce Department will ultimately decide who's right.

Bill Almashy, though, who also works at the mill, just hopes he doesn't lose his job.

BILL ALMASHY: If it would go down because they don't get the exemption, this will be the third steel mill I've closed.

KHALID: I meet Almashy in a park with his daughter. He tells me he's worked at two other mills. One went bankrupt. The other moved most of its jobs to Mexico. Along the way, he lost his home, his pension and his 401(k).

ALMASHY: A lot of steel in America is gone. Basically, our politicians failed us.

KHALID: Almashy says Americans need to get back to buying American products. And so when he first heard about President Trump's tariffs, he liked the idea. He told me he still does. But he doesn't understand why his company should get punished for importing steel.

ALMASHY: Even if they're foreign-owned but they have a factory in this country and they're employing American workers, to me, that's an American company.

KHALID: To Almashy, exempting¹⁶ this Russian-owned steel mill from the tariffs would be putting America first.

Asma Khalid, NPR News, Farrell, Penn.