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Haggar/Kochs: Trump Tariffs Hurt SD Export Economy, Kill Jobs and GDP

Don Haggar of the Koch Brothers’ South Dakota lobbying office says it’s not just farmers who are being devastated by the Trump tariffs. Haggar writes in the Rapid City Journal that our export-reliant economy is suffering in other sectors:

Don Rigdon, president of Wurth Electronics Midcom Inc. in Watertown, said that, due to the tariffs, his company may “lose business if a competitor has an established supply other than China … ” or “be forced to consider moving inventory from the U.S. to Mexico or Canada.” He added that Wurth Electronics “would not be able to absorb the additional cost and would be obliged to pass it on in the form of higher prices to our American customers.”

The tariffs are impacting our state disproportionately. According to the Brookings Institution, the retaliatory tariffs are threatening 11.6 percent of our state’s jobs that are supported by exports – the third highest percentage in the country. The institution estimated about 3,964 jobs in our state directly affected by the retaliatory tariffs [Don Haggar, op-ed: “Lift Trade Barriers That Hurt Americans,” Rapid City Journal, 2019.03.03].

Haggar says that Trump’s total trade war proposals would cost households thousands of dollars and cost our national economy millions of jobs:

A recent study by ImpactECON, a firm that provides global economic analysis, shows that, if the Trump administration implemented every tariff it has proposed, American households across the United States would lose an average of $2,357 this year, or $915 per person. Even worse: an estimated 2.75 million workers are likely to lose their jobs this year, according to the ImpactECON study. A high proportion of those losses would hit agricultural and low-skilled workers [Haggar, 2019.03.03].

That ImpactECON study also predicts full Trump tariffs (also known as tax increases on Americans) would knock our GDP down 1.78 percentage points this year and 1.25 percentage points each year over the coming decade.

When I can cite Kristi Noem and Don Haggar to establish that Donald Trump is bad for the economy, you know there’s a problem.

15 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2019-03-04 07:21

    Wasn’t this inevitable? The mow rawn in the kremlin annex still believes our trade deficit is getting smaller (its not) and China is paying us billions in tariffs (they’re not).

    Where in the world is Marlboro Barbie and Cardboard Mike standing up for their constituents? Forget Noem. Them boots she was wearing were never made for kicking butt.

  2. Dana P 2019-03-04 08:04

    I thoroughly “enjoyed” Mr Haggar’s piece in the RCJ yesterday. Finally, someone is saying the obvious. Another portion of that truth telling piece I liked was:

    “But tariffs – which are a tax on American consumers and businesses – are not the way to get there.”

    We won’t raise your taxes, ever. That’s what those evil democrats like to do. Sigh

    What I just don’t get, and never will —- is that a democrat could have taken this same stance, done the same thing, and holy moly, there would have been hell to pay. Trump/GOP? Farmers getting hurt, badly. Americans now paying more for goods and services. And on and on with the carnage —- the response from Trump followers and voters? They’ll vote for him again.

    I will never understand. Ever

  3. bearcreekbat 2019-03-04 12:08

    I share your confusion Dana. Yesterday I heard reports on MSNBC I think that after all the Cohen disclosures, tarif damage, harm to children at the borders, usurpation of the spending power in direct contravention to our Constitution, hush money payments, failure in Korea talks, alienation of foreign allies, 8,000 documented public lies, sexual abuse allegations, fraud and self dealing, hypocracy on hiring immigrants, shady financial dealings, pardoning of non-repentant criminals like Arpio, etc, etc, that 88% of Republicans still support Trump. I, too, just don’t get it.

  4. Porter Lansing 2019-03-04 13:23

    “We won’t raise your taxes, ever. That’s what those evil democrats like to do. We Republicans will let the nice things we all have fall into disrepair and eventual extinction because we’re too cheap to come off a hundred bucks to help support America.”

  5. Buckobear 2019-03-04 15:09

    When I hear the comment that “Here in SD we have low taxes, and no income tax,” I always reply: “Yes, but we don’t get much for them.”

  6. bearcreekbat 2019-03-04 15:22

    Indeed Buckobear, SD doesn’t even seem to rise to the level:

    This restaurant’s food is terrible.
    I know, but at least the portions are large.

  7. Porter Lansing 2019-03-04 17:34

    Good one, BCB. I’m going to use that one. “Living with the Republican’s low taxes, small government philosophy is like eating every day in the same bad restaurant. The food’s terrible but at least the portions are large.” Brilliant ✯✯✯✯✯

  8. Moses6 2019-03-04 17:46

    Have Pat Powers and Kristi Noem have a discussion even add photo op Thune and Slick Mike for a discussion .Watch all the snow melt from that one, due to alll the hot air in the room.

  9. mike from iowa 2019-03-04 18:14

    Four in ten would vote for Drumpf for bogus potus again. It seems like the whole damn wingnut caucus is unconscious. They can’t all be that stoopid, can they?

  10. Porter Lansing 2019-03-04 19:19

    A Complete Psychological Analysis of Trump’s Support
    The psychological phenomena described below mostly pertain to those supporters who would follow Trump off a cliff. These are the people who will stand by his side no matter what scandals come to light, or what sort of evidence for immoral and illegal behavior surfaces.
    No. 4 of 14 – “Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn.”
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201812/complete-psychological-analysis-trumps-support

  11. Debbo 2019-03-04 23:29

    It very disappointing to learn that there are so many more mean and stupid, not to mention racist and misogynist Americans than I ever would have guessed prior to 2016.

    Deeply saddening to.

    After we’ve ended this nightmare, maybe we should round them up and send half to Alasippi. That can be their new nation and we’ll build a wall around it so they’ll feel right at home. We’ll send the other half to Dakota and do the same. Every month we’ll air drop necessary supplies to them because they won’t be self-sufficient. Then they can be as white and homophobic and racist and hateful as they want. Write their own constitution and laws to break. Schools, if they want them, or not. They must ALL be sterilized though. No reproducting.

    There. That’s my solution.

  12. leslie 2019-03-05 11:25

    Koch billionaires are devious in their rush to extract fossil fuels and undermine our democracy to uninhibit their industry greed. They support PBS Nova Science occupying its board yet lead the collaborators of climate denial.

    L. Wright NEWYORKER 1.01.18 reports Koch’s are refiners, own substantial Alberta tar sands and need pipelines to transport for refining and export. They have other heavy industry. In TX because of high oil price economic growth has come from there (while CA with 40% more residents has $2.6T GDP compared to TX-$1.6T GDP, since 2000 Dallas/Houston Jon growth expansion by 30% is 3xs the Los Angeles rate. 2008’s $145bbl fell to <$30 2016 do job growth lagged behind the nation. 100 producers went bankrupt leaving $74B debt.

    Three TX wells define TX. In 1898 Sour Spring Mound on the gulf near LA, at 1000 foot depth engineer AF Lucas discovered pumped mud buttressed a rotary bit hole. In 1901 hole ejected mud and tons of drill pipe over the derrick, then silence before millions of years of dinosaur and reptile remains spewed up with rocks, gas… and then oil 150 feet in the air. The greatest oil discovery in history. Spindle Top.

    Suspicious of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, Texans formed Gulf/Texaco (now Chevron). The boom crashed in 1930. Texas pattern was established.

    Next, in East TX , Dad Joiner, faking geological reports, suspected at 3500 feet Cretaceous crocodiles, algae and plankton, and dinosaurs of course transformed into Woodbine sands saturated with oil/gas. An October 1930 gurgle sounded releasing a rain of fossil fuel leading up to 1000 wells-half of US production. Derricks rose in city backyards. $00.13 bbl oil broke Joiner who sold out to HL Hunt died broke while Hunt became the worlds richest man.

    Finally, in North TX Geo Mitchell held 300,000acres in the Ft Worth basin. A Mile and a half down he speculated the Barnett Shale tight rock held the largest gas reserve in the onshore US. Lawrence Livermore labs conducted 30
    Nuclear explosions developing future fracking. (Some subsidy!) 17 years of costly hydraulic fluids methods were developed. Eventually water and cheap face cream cut costs by 2/3s. Horizontal drilling by 1998 yielded one profitable well. The third TX boom was on. July 2008 $145 bbl peaked as 14,000 new wells in the Barnett alone crashed prices. By January, <$30 bbl. 5mbbl turned into 10mbbl production in 5 years. The fastest growth in production ever seen. Fracking.

    Earth quakes from 2008-2015. Irving TX. 1200 truck deliveries per fracked well are necessary over a month. Energy costs, despoiled communities and environmental hazards. By 2010 air quality had carcinogen benzene near schools, hospital fields, football fields, universities. 300 wells within city limits, asthma and nosebleeds in Denton TX.

    Leakage, methane renders fracked natural gas no better than coal warming the globe. Mitchell’s WaPo op-ed pleaded for more environmental regulation. “Damn Cowboys wreck the world to get an extra 1%.” But TX unheeded. Slavishly beholden TX legislature give cities almost no recourse when frackers move in.

    Now in West TX, off I-10 the cold spring/endangered fish at Balmorea TX just north of the mountainous Ft Davis of 1860s buffalo soldier fame, the break-even cost of a fracked well is at $25bbl in the SD sized Permian Basin. USGS projects recent discoveries of 75T cf of gas, 3B bbl oil and another 20B bbl oil there.

    TX has its own electrical grid. It uses more than any other state. 17% is heavily subsidized wind power, on some days filling half of TX need. The state also believes there is “no public health benefit from lowering ozone levels.” Opposite the EPA finding.

    The 70s/80s bust lasted 20 years. The fracking boom is likely to bust but the state’s respected economist argues low prices are actually good for the state economy, diversity, pivot from fossil fuels and, I add, the tyranny of big oil in TX and the Koch brothers.

    I will add the litany of Koch fossil fuels damage to the economy of the nation.

  13. leslie 2019-03-05 11:31

    2dpara Don is job and do is so. Autocorrect idiocy

  14. leslie 2019-03-05 16:40

    Koch’s are apparently moving nationwide against trump’s tariffs. Even in Lindsay Graham’s redneck state. Meg kinnard AP Columbia SC 3.05.10

  15. mike from iowa 2019-03-06 17:46

    Moar on drumpf. According to WAPO, Drumpf has lied or mislead us 9014 times in 773 days.

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