President Trump’s ten percent tariffs on imported aluminum have brought the domestic aluminum industry and American jobs roaring back in the economy, new research reveals.
Research by the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Robert E. Scottfindsthat since Trump implemented the aluminum import tariffs, primary aluminum producers are on track to create 1,075 American jobs and downstream producers are to create more than 2,000 jobs in the industry.
During years of lawmakers protecting the free trade status quo, between 2010 and 2017, a total of 18 of 23 aluminum smelters in the U.S. were closed, Scott notes. This eliminated 13,000 high-paying jobs in the industry.
By 2016, only three aluminum refineries supplied U.S. smelters. Just a year later, all but one of those aluminum refiners had closed.
This downward trend of the American aluminum industry has started to reverse thanks to tariffs implemented by Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in March 2018, Scott writes:
U.S. primary aluminum production is projected to increase by 67 percent(500,000 tons per year) between 2017 and the end of 2018.Three smelters are being restarted, and another has announced a capacity expansion. Seven smelters in total will be in operation by the end of 2018. These restart and expansionprojects will create over 1,000 new jobsand generate over $100 million in new investment. [Emphasis added]
Since Section 232 tariffs were imposed, 22 new and expansion projects have been announced in downstream aluminum industriesproducing extruded (rod and bar, pipe and tube, and extruded shapes) and rolled (sheet and plate) products.These new and expanded facilities will employ over 2,000 additional workers, generate $3.3 billion in new investments, and add nearly 1,000,000 tons of annual rolling and extrusion capacity to the downstream, domestic aluminum industry. [Emphasis added]
All of the aluminum industry data is compiled by Scott, here:
In March 2016, New Madrid, Missouri’s Noranda Aluminum plantclosedafter filing for bankruptcy, putting 900 Americans out of work. Soon after Trump’s aluminum tariffs were announced, a new aluminum smelter was announced, the Magnitude 7 Metals plant. This new smelter, alone, is set to create about 450 American jobs.
Similarly, the aluminum tariffs have produced large gains for American workers in downstream production. For example, in Ashland, Kentucky, a new aluminum mill isset to openby 2020, creating about 600 high-paying American jobs.
The new aluminum mill is a fresh start and much needed for the small community of Ashland. In 2016, during the Obama administration, AK Steel laid off 633 American steelworkers who were forced to claim unemployment.
Scott also calculated the actual jobs gained or lost in the U.S. manufacturing and services industries between February and October 2018, debunking two studies by the pro-free tradeTrade Partnership.
For instance, theTrade Partnershipstudies claimed that 20,000 American manufacturing jobs would be eliminated from the economy due to Trump’s tariffs and trade retaliation. Instead, at least 176,000 American manufacturing jobs have been created since the implementation of the tariffs.
In the services industries, theTrade Partnershipstudies claimed Trump’s tariffs and the subsequent trade retaliation would eliminate more than 520,000 U.S. jobs. Instead, more than 1.4 million service industry jobs in the U.S. economy have been created since the tariffs were implemented.
Likewise, Trump’s 25 percent tariff on steel imports has been a boon to American steelworkers. As Breitbart News reported, there have been about 11,100 U.S. jobs created due to Trump’s protective tariffs.
On the other hand, there have been about 514 job losses directly tied to the tariffs. There are 20 times as many American jobs that have been created in the last six months thanks to Trump’s tariffs on imported foreign goods than jobs that have been lost.
Free trade between the U.S. and China eliminated at least 3.4 jobs for Americans in all 50 states and every congressional district between 2001 and 2017.
The vast majority of those jobs lost from free trade with China has been in the U.S. manufacturing sector, making up 74.4 percent of all jobs lost and amounting to 2.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost since 2001.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Fired FBI Director James Comey - who put two pro-Clinton / anti-Trump FBI employees in charge of investigating both Clinton and Trump, lashed out at the president and GOP lawmakers on Monday, according to The Hill.
"So another day of Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Steele dossier," Comey quipped to reporters following six hours of closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill. "This while the President of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI, and attacking the rule of law in this country. How does that make any sense?"
Comey also slammed GOP lawmakers for sitting on their hands.
"Republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter, the words of a president matter, the rule of law matters, and the truth matters. Where are those Republicans today," said Comey. "At some point, someone has to stand up and in the fear of Fox News and fear of their base, and fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement."
The former FBI Director also refused to deny that he leaked classified information after he was fired as FBI Director - an assertion made by President Trump and others in April after it was revealed that Comey released what he claimed were personal memos documenting conversations with then-president-elect Trump in which he says he felt pressured to end the investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn.
Comey gave the memos to his friend and FBI employee Daniel Richman, a Columbia University professor, to be leaked to the New York Times in an effort to instigate the special counsel investigation.
Is everybody believing what is going on. James Comey can’t define what a leak is. He illegally leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION but doesn’t understand what he did or how serious it is. He lied all over the place to cover it up. He’s either very sick or very dumb. Remember sailor!
Read rest here ..https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-17/foreigners-dump-us-treasuries-they-liquidate-record-amount-us-stocks
In his November Webcast, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach warned that as a result of rising hedging costs, US Treasury bonds have become increasingly unattractive to foreign buyers. This can be seen in the chart below which shows the yield on the 10Y US TSY unhedged, and also hedged into Yen and Euros. In the latter two cases, the effectively yield plunges from over 3%, to negative as a result of the gaping rate differential between the Fed and ECB or BOJ
The Bond Market Has Frozen: For The First Month Since 2008, Not A Single Junk Bond Prices
Late last week, we reported that in the aftermath of a dramatic drop in loan prices, a record outflow from loan funds, and a general collapse in investor sentiment that was euphoric as recently as the start of October, the wheels had come off the loan market which was on the verge of freezing after we got the first hung bridge loan in years, after Wells Fargo and Barclays took the rare step of keeping a $415 million leveraged loan on their books after failing to sell it to investors.
The two banks now "plan" to wait until January - i.e., hope that yield chasing desperation returns - to offload the loan they made to help finance Blackstone’s buyout of Ulterra Drilling Technologies, a company that makes bits for oil and gas drilling.
The reason the banks were stuck with hundreds of millions in unwanted paper is because they had agreed to finance the bridge loan whether or not there was enough demand from investors, as the acquisition needed to close by the end of the year. The delayed transaction means the banks will have to bear the risk of the price of the loans falling further, as well as costs associated with holding loans on their books.
The pulled Ulterra deal wasn't alone.
As we reported previously, in Europe the market appears to have already locked up, as three loans were scrapped over the last two weeks. To wit, movie theater chain Vue International withdrew a 833 million pound-equivalent ($1.07 billion) loan sale. While the deal was meant to mostly refinance existing debt, around 100 million pounds was underwritten to finance the company’s acquisition of German group CineStar.
More deals were pulled the prior week when diversified manufacturer Jason Inc. became at least the fourth issuer to scrap a U.S. leveraged loan. Additionally, Perimeter Solutions also pulled its repricing attempt, Ta Chen International scrapped a $250MM term loan set to finance the company’s purchase of a rolling mill, and Algoma Steel withdrew its $300m exit financing. Global University System in November also dropped its dollar repricing.
Today, the FT picks up on the fact that the junk bond market - whether in loans or bonds - has frozen up, and reported that US credit markets have "ground to a halt" with fund managers refusing to fund buyouts and investors shunning high-yield bond sales as rising interest rates and market volatility weigh on sentiment (ironically it is the rising rates that assure lower rates as financial conditions tighten and the Fed is forced to resume easing in the coming year, that has been a major hurdle to floating-rate loan demand as the same higher rates that pushed demand for paper to all time highs are set to reverse).
Meanwhile, things are even worse in the bond market, where not a single company has borrowed money through the $1.2tn US high-yield corporate bond market this month according to the FT. If that freeze continues until the end of the month, it would be the first month since November 2008 that not a single high-yield bond priced in the market, according to data providers Informa and Dealogic.
Separately, as we already reported, the FT notes that in the loan market at least two deals - including the Barclays/Wells bridge loan - were postponed and could be the first of several transactions pulled from the market this year, bankers and investors said, as mutual funds and managers of collateralised loan obligations — the largest buyer by far in the leveraged loan sector — wait out the uncertainty.
“This is clearly more than year-end jitters,” said Guy LeBas, a strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott. “What we’re seeing now is pretty typical for end-of-credit-cycle behaviour.”
A prolonged period of low interest rates since the financial crisis a decade ago has seen companies binge on cheap debt. However, as financial conditions have tightened, the high level of corporate leverage has raised widespread concern among regulators, analysts and investors.
In the loan market, it's not a total disaster just yet, because even as prices have slumped over the past two months, banks that committed to finance highly leveraged buyouts - including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs - have offered loans at substantial discounts to entice investors. As the chart below shows, the average new issue yield by month has exploded to the highest in years, with CCC-rated issuers forced to pay the most in 7 years to round up investor demand.
Still, as the following table from Bank of America shows, quite a few deals have priced, if only in the loan market:
Even so, other banks including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Wells Fargo, have had to pull deals altogether as they just couldn't find enough buyers no matter how generous the concessions.
In addition to the Ulterra deal, technology services provider ConvergeOne postponed a $1.3bn leveraged loan offering that backed its takeover by private equity group CVC last week. As the FT notes, Deutsche Bank and UBS had marketed the deal to investors in a package that included senior and subordinated loans, with the junior debt expected to yield as much as 12 per cent in November when prices were first floated. While the banks attracted some bids for the debt, orders failed to surpass the overall size of the deal, which was postponed to the new year, according to people with knowledge of the transaction.
Why delaying deals into 2019? One word: hope.
One person familiar with the deal said the banks would market the loans again in January, when they hope market conditions will improve, and that other leveraged loans being marketed could be postponed to 2019.
The trouble lenders have faced in the leveraged loan market has mirrored the exasperation felt by investors in other asset classes. Higher-quality investment-grade bonds have also sold off, with a number of planned deals pulled from the market in recent weeks.
That said, for now the junk bond freeze and loan indigestion has remained confined to lower-rated issuers. However, that may change too, and should the "Ice-9" spread to the high-grade sector, where the bulk of issuance is to fund buybacks and M&A, that's when the real pain begins.
