Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers exchanged jabs over the Trump administration’s trade policies on the paper’s editorial page Wednesday.
Ross, in a letter to the editor, said a recent editorial “cherry picks data and ignores key facts” and was “dangerous” because it presented a false picture of the industry. In a follow-up editorial, the journal’s writers accused Ross of cherry picking the data himself.
The exchange was sparkled by a Feb. 4 editorial titled “Steel Tariff Profiteers,” which said that while the steel industry had benefited from President Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imports, the gains for workers were negligible and that the industries that rely on steel as a raw material were suffering. Ross contended in Wednesday’s letter that the tariffs had revitalized the industry, stating that employment had risen by 1,000 between March and November and that further job gains were on the way.
“We are confident that many more jobs will materialize as billions of dollars of planned and announced investments are completed in these industries that remain vital to our national security,” Ross said. He concluded that the editorial “fails to recognize” that the industry might collapse altogether without the support from the tariffs. “Your failure to acknowledge this fact is dangerous.”
The paper’s editorialists shot back that the increase in employment in the steel industry amounted to just 1.2 percent and argued that the trend was “flat at best.” At the same time companies like Ford, General Motors, and Caterpillar, among others, had seen profits drop as the cost of steel rose. “There’s no ledger that tallies tariff costs economy-wide. But a question for Mr. Ross: How much is he willing to make America pay for another 1,000 steel jobs?” the paper asked.
