In my opinion, the pain inflicted to steel-consuming industry workers is no cause for laughter, especially when it is the direct result of policies put in place by our own government, no matter who the president was at the time. It won’t be funny today either when the same policies, when implemented by Mr. Trump, result in the same job losses as we saw under Bush. Whatever the president believes, even he cannot suspend the the law of economics.

Oh and by the way, we won’t get more jobs in the steel industry as a result of the steel tariffs. Academic papers have proven this over and over. As Commerce’s own report on steel (figure 7, p. 36) shows, the decline of jobs in the steel industry predates the competition with China. Industry experts know that this is mostly due to innovation and industry consolidation.