Trump to papers: Drop dead

Even though the Daily News is now accessed by millions on screens, many readers still enjoy us the original way the news was delivered: via printer’s ink smeared on paper. Now a wrongheaded U.S. retaliatory tariff on imported Canadian newsprint is threatening how we and our competitors can spread the news. Stop the tariff so that it doesn’t stop the presses.

When the huge 3,000-pound rolls of newsprint — 6-foot-3 inches tall, 4-foot-2 in diameter — arrive by rail at our plant, it’s the end of a long journey.

They started as Quebec pine trees. The soft wood isn’t grown in wild, virgin woods, but in managed forests.

The trees are harvested for lumber, then the shavings and odd shapes and other leftovers are collected and ground down to a light, fluffy pulp containing 99% water and 1% cellulose fiber.

The pulp is strained, dried and flattened into the off-white newsprint and spooled onto rolls 10 miles long and loaded on to trains and trucks.

There isn’t nearly enough of the stuff here in the U.S.; Canada has been the source for decades.

Suddenly, in a vast overreaction to a single American manufacturer’s complaint, the Trump administration is slapping fees of up to 30% on the stuff, hitting newspapers in the gut at a time when, let’s be honest, everyone knows the economics of this vital business are already brutal.

Call it death by a thousand paper cuts.