Tariff tension: Whether they love or hate Trump trade policies, businesses eager to dish about them

The top bosses at South Carolina manufacturers and some of the Port of Charleston’s biggest customers don’t always agree about the impact tariffs are having on the nation’s economy, but this much is certain: They’re all talking about them.

Import taxes imposed on foreign goods entering the U.S. and retaliatory tariffs other countries are placing on American-made products are dominating the conversation during the latest rash of earnings calls.

The Charlotte-bsed steelmaker, which has plants in Berkeley County and Darlington, reported its best second-quarter numbers in the company’s more than 50-year history. Profits more than doubled for the period, buoyed by 25 percent tariffs on imported steel — typically cheap metal from China dumped on the American market.

All in all, we’re very happy with tariffs, Ferriola told stock analysts.

Tom Hayes, on the other hand, isn’t so pleased. The Tyson Foods president said in a regulatory filing that the chicken and processed meat company will cut its full-year earnings expectations by as much as $1 per share because of trade worries.

Read more: https://www.postandcourier.com/business/tariff-tension-whether-they-love-or-hate-trump-trade-policies/article_c3ec9626-95b8-11e8-96fa-9726a71e17ff.html

Notable Baker

>>2463694

Ripples everywhere for the global oil industry

Trade war is different, though, because that usually entails large parts of the economy taking flak. While President Donald Trump appears to have pulled back from an immediate confrontation with the EU, the impact of existing tariffs largely aimed at China is starting to be felt from auto plants to farms.

The oil market has suffered a mild dose of nerves, too, although it’s also been contending with other bearish factors, from higher Saudi Arabian output to a potential pre-US mid-term release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It certainly hasn’t been hit as hard as metals such as copper or aluminum.

China took 20 per cent of US crude-oil exports in the 12 months through April and has been the largest market for them this year, according to the International Energy Agency. One line of thinking says China imposing tariffs on US crude oil exports would have zero effect. China would buy less US oil, but would then buy it from elsewhere.

Any victory for China would be pyrrhic. Bloodying the nose of America’s oil industry wouldn’t change the fact that China’s export-heavy economy has been built on the foundations of the free trade system underwritten by the US and now being undermined by it. This presents a broader threat to oil producers everywhere, not just in Texas.

For now, there is at least hope that a bigger war with Europe might be avoided. “For now” does a lot of work in that sentence, though. The talks at the White House represent a truce, not a final peace agreement. Meanwhile, antipathy to “unfair” trade and a propensity for sudden moves remain defining features of the Trump administration.

And yet, as that mooted $12-billion bailout for tariff-trampled farmers shows, this administration seems fine with acting first and trying to patch up the collateral damage afterwards. As we’ve seen already in America’s electricity and coal sectors, energy dominance comes with a hefty dose of that old-time state meddling.

https://oglinks.news/article/895873/ripples-everywhere-for-the-global-oil-industry

>>2463914

Pfff these still the most positive articles, all else I see on the net are elephant shit.

>>2464088

Yep, the alt leftists are organizing on twatter and tracking the right.