Toro
Diamond Member
None of those article claim that automation is the SOLE CAUSE of job loss.
Thus your point is the one that is unsupported.
The primary cause is automation.
Here is the future of steel production. This is absolutely coming.
“So steel and aluminum will see a lot of good things happen. We’re going to have new jobs popping up,” Mr. Trump told steel and aluminum executives last Thursday at the White House as he announced his 25% and 10% tax on imports.
Someone should tell him about Voestalpine AG’s steel plant in Austria, which reveals the reality of steel production and jobs. A Bloomberg News story from June 20, 2017 offered a fascinating look at how a modern plant can now produce high-quality steel with few workers.
The plant in Donawitz, a two-hour drive from Vienna, needs all of 14 employees to make 500,000 tons of steel wire a year. The same mill in the 1960s would have needed as many as 1,000 workers to produce a similar amount albeit of lesser quality.
“We have to forget steel as a core employer,” Voestalpine CEO Wolfgang Eder told Bloomberg reporter Thomas Biesheuvel. “In the long run we will lose most of the classic blue-collar workers, people doing the hot and dirty jobs in coking plants or around the blast furnaces. This will all be automated.”
Voestalpine long ago concluded it couldn’t compete with the low-cost blast furnaces of the Chinese and others. So it has invested in technology to reduce costs while competing to make high-quality niche products. The so-called U.S. mini-mills have done something similar to stay competitive. Tariffs will let those mills raise prices and profits, but they won’t add much more than a token number of new jobs.
Someone should tell him about Voestalpine AG’s steel plant in Austria, which reveals the reality of steel production and jobs. A Bloomberg News story from June 20, 2017 offered a fascinating look at how a modern plant can now produce high-quality steel with few workers.
The plant in Donawitz, a two-hour drive from Vienna, needs all of 14 employees to make 500,000 tons of steel wire a year. The same mill in the 1960s would have needed as many as 1,000 workers to produce a similar amount albeit of lesser quality.
“We have to forget steel as a core employer,” Voestalpine CEO Wolfgang Eder told Bloomberg reporter Thomas Biesheuvel. “In the long run we will lose most of the classic blue-collar workers, people doing the hot and dirty jobs in coking plants or around the blast furnaces. This will all be automated.”
Voestalpine long ago concluded it couldn’t compete with the low-cost blast furnaces of the Chinese and others. So it has invested in technology to reduce costs while competing to make high-quality niche products. The so-called U.S. mini-mills have done something similar to stay competitive. Tariffs will let those mills raise prices and profits, but they won’t add much more than a token number of new jobs.
Steel Tariffs Without Jobs
You might as well become a socialist.