Lift tariffs and save American Jobs
The tariffs on Canadian newsprint have wreaked terrible unintended consequences on America’s community newspapers, the source of local news for millions of people in every town and hamlet across the country, and the jobs of more than half a million reporters, editors, advertising and production staffs in the printing industry.
It’s like setting fire to the grassroots of America.
This crisis began developing in January when the Commerce Department imposed a 6.2 percent tariff on imports of newsprint from Canada which provides most of this essential product to our newspapers. But in March the tariff was increased by 22 percent, delivering a virtual body blow to small town newspapers that are far less able to absorb such a huge cost increase than are large newspapers, although they have also been hit hard. Already most newspaper printers have seen up to 30 percent higher cost of newsprint.
At risk are thousands American jobs.
The newspaper, printing and publishing industries support 600,000 jobs, many of them at small town newspapers like the Rome News- Tribune. In Georgia alone, newspapers employ 10,000 workers, most on community newspapers. Many of these workers are in jeopardy of losing their jobs if the unjust and destructive tariffs are not lifted. Please consider the impact on the families of employees who lose their jobs and no longer of bring home their paychecks to put food on the table.
Consider that newsprint is the biggest operating cost after payrolls for the vast majority of newspapers. Consequently, as surveys by the News Media Alliance show, 70 percent of newspapers expect to take steps to cut their consumption of newsprint and about 38 percent are looking at the painful option of cutting their workforce. This is already happening. The Tampa Bay Times, Florida’s largest newspaper, recently laid off about 50 employees as the result of the tariffs pushing up operating costs by $3 million a year.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Ozona Stockman in Ozona, Texas, the seat of Crockett County, population 3,765. Unable to get newsprint from its usual supplier in San Angelo, Stockman employees had to travel to two other cities to get newsprint and look for a way to obtain it from another supplier. This is what the Stockman staff said about the newspaper’s predicament: “Those tariffs are job stealers and newspaper killers throughout the entire state and country.” That’s the story of community newspapers throughout the country.
The Commerce Department’s tariffs resulted from a petition by a single newsprint mill in Washington State, claiming imports from Canada are unfair and injurious to its business. Other than the one company, the publishing, printing, paper and allied industries are solidly opposed to the tariffs and have formed a coalition to fight them. The Georgia Press Association, of which the Rome News-Tribune is a member, is part of this coalition and so are state press associations throughout the nation.
Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in Congress to suspend the tariff until a study has been made of the economic wellbeing of the newsprint and local newspaper publishing industry. One of the co- sponsors of this important legislation is U. S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who zeroed in on the issues involved.
“Local newspapers are a vital source of news and community information, especially in rural and small-town America,” he said. “Unfair or punitive action taken against producers of groundwood paper would threaten to put many Georgia newspapers out of business and could cost up to 1,000 jobs in Georgia.” That is what we face in Georgia. Elsewhere the outlook is much the same or worse.
We would also like to ask U.S. Rep. Tom Graves to follow in the footsteps of Isakson by putting forward legislation to suspend tariffs imposed on imported groundwood paper from Canada, which is where much of the newsprint used by newspapers is produced.
The International Trade Commission has scheduled a hearing for July 17 on this tariff and we hope it will be lifted. But relief is needed immediately for newspapers small and large across America.
When we’re old and sick and poor, we might be forced to keep warm by burning all the government reports that we ignored, warning us that Social Security and Medicare are running out of money; the latest such report was issued recently.
According to the Social Security Administration, the Medicare trust fund will run dry in 2026 and Social Security funds in 2034. They will still be supported by payroll taxes, but those taxes will not cover full benefits, and recipients will likely experience severe benefit cuts if the funds aren’t replenished. The implications are dire. Marketwatch. com put it best, saying that if the funds aren’t replenished, “we will soon be facing rates of elderly poverty unseen since the Great Depression. Of the 18 million workers between ages 55 and 64 in 2012, 4.3 million were projected to be poor or near- poor when they turn 65. That grows to 20 million in 2035 and 25 million in 2050.”
This isn’t a new warning. But since pensions are disappearing and Americans aren’t saving enough money to cover their retirements, the consequences could be disastrous. The Harvard Business Review reports: “Among Americans between 40 and 45 years of age, the median retirement account balance is just $ 14,500 — less than 4 percent of what the median-income worker will require in savings to meet his retirement needs.” Increasingly, retirees are depending on Social Security in the absence of pensions, but also because wages have not kept pace with everyday living expenses, leaving workers less able to save enough for retirement.
But the situation can be fixed. In a study based on 2011 figures, AARP proposed a dozen ways Social Security could be mended. Of all 12, the most efficient would be to lift the cap on income subject to the Social Security tax. Right now people stop paying the 6.2 percent Social Security tax on incomes above $ 128,700. That would fill 86 percent of the shortfall. Other suggestions like raising the retirement age to 68 would fill 18 percent of the shortfall; cutting benefits would fill less than 13 percent of the gap.
Fixing Medicare, however, is a lot trickier. Medicare’s hospitalcare trust fund is sagging, in part because payroll taxes were lower than expected in 2017 and because President Donald Trump’s changes to the Affordable Care Act are raising hospital costs. In particular, his abandonment of the requirement that people get insurance or pay a fine means hospitals are going to be seeing more uninsured patients, for which paying and insured patients bear the burden.
The administration has yet to rein in drug costs, another drain on Medicare, and Republicans did away with the ACA’s requirement to reduce overall Medicare costs by deriding cost review boards as “death panels.”
The long cold winter of retirement will hit us all. How long and how cold depends on who takes leadership now on fixing these critical systems. Let’s start with elected officials from aging states — like Pennsylvania, where, according to the U. S. census, the senior population is growing so fast that by 2025, more than 1 in 5 of us will be 65 or older.