Trade war’s wounded: Companies improvise

WASHINGTON » In New York, a maker of furnaces for semiconductor and solar companies is moving its research and development to China to dodge President Trump’s import taxes — a move that threatens a handful of its 26 U.S. jobs.

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the CEO of a company that makes precision parts for the biomedical and chip making fields jokes bitterly that he’s running “a nonprofit” and might have to cut jobs.

Trump frequently boasts that the taxes he’s imposed on imports — steel and aluminum and nearly half of all goods from China — have showered the U.S. Treasury with newfound revenue.

Yet tariffs like Trump’s account for barely 1 percent of federal revenue. It’s actually companies like Linton Crystal Technologies in Rochester, Accu-Swiss Inc. in Oakdale, California, and Clips & Clamps Industries in Plymouth, Michigan, that are paying the price for his trade wars.

Tariffs tend to swell the cost of these companies’ materials and leave them at a competitive disadvantage to foreign rivals unburdened by import taxes.