Dan Moore, a 58-year-old steel mill worker, gives the president an "A+" on everything from tax cuts to foreign policy, but he's not so sure about tariffs.
"We need tariffs, but when it starts to impact the company where you work ... you're thinking, well wait a minute, timeout!" he said.
Moore is worried the tariffs might cost him his job. The mill where he works, NLMK Pennsylvania, in the town of Farrell, not far from the border with Ohio, employs 750 workers and is a subsidiary of Novolipetsk Steel, or NLMK, Russia's top steelmaker.
But even though NLMK is creating American jobs, the company is being hit with a 25 percent tariff on steel because it imports raw steel slabs from Russia before turning them into coils in Pennsylvania and then selling that steel to customers that manufacture cars or pipes, for example.
Bill Almashy, a 48-year-old crane operator at the mill, worries that NLMK might not be able to survive the tariffs.
He knows what it's like to lose a steel mill job. This is the third mill he's worked at in recent years. One of the previous mills went bankrupt, the other moved most of its jobs to Mexico. Along the way, Almashy lost his home, his pension and his 401(k).
"A lot of steel in America is gone," he said. " Basically our politicians failed us."
And so when he first heard about President Trump's tariffs, he "applauded" the president. He says he still does, but he doesn't understand why his company should get punished for importing steel.
"Even if they're foreign-owned, but they have a factory in this country and they're employing American workers, to me, that's an American company," Almashy said.
To him, exempting this Russian-owned steel mill from tariffs would be a matter of putting "America First."
And that's the crux of the debate.
Moore voted for former President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but during the last presidential election, he became enamored with Donald Trump's promise to bring back jobs and renegotiate trade deals. He thought tariffs in the abstract would be beneficial, but now that they could hurt the company where he works, he thinks the Trump administration needs to re-evaluate the idea.
"Tariffs — they may help some people, but they're gonna hurt a lot of people too. I don't know exactly how you balance that," Moore said. "Maybe it's not the right time for tariffs." Maybe, he says, the president ought to focus more on wages and jobs instead.
Moore is about to head into the mill down the road for his shift. He's wearing a dark blue work uniform shirt over his round belly and a Trump hat over his graying hair. It's a souvenir he picked up during Trump's inauguration.
Moore insists he has "no regrets" about his vote, even though he knows some might think that's strange given the precariousness of his current employment due to the very tariffs Trump introduced.
"President Trump was the better candidate," he says flatly.
Plus, he thinks the president is receptive to feedback.
"I have plans to write a letter to President Trump or maybe a personal phone call," Moore said. He believes that if he can get the president's ear, he might be able to convince him to give NLMK an exemption for the 3 million tons of semi-finished steel slabs it wants to import from Russia.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/08/617200482/trumps-tariffs-worry-a-small-steel-city-in-pennsylvania
