U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York brought business people to the Port of Oswego Thursday to detail the ways in which President Trump’s punitive tariffs have hurt their businesses. Schumer used the occasion to unveil a bill he said would repeal Trump’s tariffs and compensate businesses for their tariff-related losses.
The event featured an official of an East Syracuse fabrication company and a Cayuga County farmer. Kevin Pelc of Eagle Metalcraft said that Trump’s tariffs made their products so expensive that a customer responsible for about half of the company’s revenues took their business to an Asian company.
Pelc said the company tried to cut costs to stay intact but had to lay off 6 of their 16 employees. “Losing a significant amount of business doesn't just affect a financial report, it affects our abilities to keep people working and plan for their future,” he said.
The farmer, Ed Pierce of the town of Sterling, said that as he worked to rebuild his beef cow farm from a health issue that forced him to sell many of his cows, he built a greenhouse to diversify his products. But tariffs made the lumber he would have ordinarily bought from a supplier in Oswego so expensive that he had to mill the lumber himself. It also affected a neighbor, who sold Pierce the hay for his cows. The neighbor put off his annual fall purchase of fertilizer to invest the money in badly needed repairs. Come spring, tariffs increased the price of fertilizer so much that he had to buy less, resulting in a lower quality crop of hay.
“There's a lot going on with input costs for all farmers today,” Pierce said. “And if I'm having difficulty or I'm seeing a doubling in diesel prices or a doubling in fertilizer prices, there's an impact.”
Sen. Schumer said his bill would be among the first items taken up by the new Congress in January if Democrats take control of the House and Senate. Schumer believes that the damage done to businesses by the tariffs can be reversed.
“If the tariffs stay in effect for another year or two, the supply chains will crumble. But right now it's a short enough period of time,” to fully restore them, he said. Pelc wasn’t as certain that a rebound would happen quickly.
Schumer attacked Trump’s tariffs, highlighting the damage to tourism from the loss of Canadian visitors and the estimated $1 million loss of business to the Port of Oswego. He said Trump’s only reason to impose tariffs on Canada was to get even after feeling he’d been insulted. Schumer calls Trump’s trade decisions childish, foolish and stupid.
