As deadline nears, a steel boss battles chaos

Somewhere in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, cargo ships bound for the U.S. are carrying 5,000 tons of steel ordered by David Wolff ’s Michigan-based distribution company.

Somewhere in the American Midwest, Wolff — the chief operations officer at Peerless Steel Co. — is racing from client to client, offering what guidance he can in the last hectic days before President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs take effect on Friday. But Wolff himself admits he doesn’t have much of a clue what happens next.

He doesn’t know if his shipments will clear customs before the midnight deadline, saving the company millions of dollars (“we’re praying”). More generally, he doesn’t know how much he’ll have to hike prices by, or for how long. In three decades in the industry, Wolff says he’s never seen such chaos. “It’s a mess,” he said by mobile phone on Tuesday. “It’s the Wild West.”

Peerless and most of its customers are based in Trump country, the Rust Belt states that propelled the president to a long-shot election win. He pledged to bring jobs back to a onceproud industrial region hollowed out by free trade. For supporters, this week’s measures — a 25 percent charge on steel, and 10 percent on aluminum — are a down payment on that promise. For most economists, they’re a perilous step down a road that could lead to trade war, putting at risk many more jobs than they can create.

For Wolff, they’re a practical headache. Based in Troy, a 30-minute drive north of Detroit, Peerless buys steel from Europe and Asia. It delivers the metal to manufacturers who turn it into everything from car pistons to construction cranes. About two-thirds of the company’s purchases may be subject to the tariffs.

Peerless plans to absorb part of the additional cost, and pass the rest on to clients who employ tens of thousands of people. Some of those companies are already making contingency plans that involve moving or closing plants, he said.

That illustrates why economists are so united in hostility to Trump’s plans. They’ll create jobs in steel and aluminum production, an industry that employs about 140,000 Americans — and put the squeeze on businesses that use the metals in manufacturing, which provide jobs for more than 30 times that number.

The good news is already coming in, as companies from U.S. Steel Corp. to Republic Steel announce they’re reopening plants. And it’s welcome in places like River Rouge, just south of Detroit, where Jim Allen is president of the local United Steelworkers union.

Allen campaigned for Hillary Clinton, but he supports the tariffs. “It’s a lot more upbeat here now,” said the 24-year industry veteran. “It’s always seemed like there’s something hanging over our heads, because we were facing competition from goods brought into the country for cheaper than we can produce.”

The bad news will be more geographically spread-out, and may take longer to arrive. And there’s no way of knowing how bad it will get, until the global response to Trump’s America-first measures becomes clear.