For Nick Jarmoszuk, an Ohio industrialist, the trade war President Donald Trump has unleashed against China has not come a moment too soon.
America’s trade imbalance with the rest of the world was “something that’s been festering for a long time, and it’s a good thing to address”, he said. “The longer you leave it, the tougher it is to fix.”
Jarmoszuk is the founder and chief executive of Skylift, a small company in Lorain, Ohio, that makes equipment for electricity utility companies. He said he would not be hurt by the severe 145 per cent tariffs on China because his company used components manufactured in the US. “If most people did that we’d be in a better place,” he said.
Many in Lorain agree with Jarmoszuk, despite the turmoil Trump’s protectionist agenda has caused across global markets, and believe the president’s policy can trigger a renaissance in US manufacturing.
“The companies that produce in foreign countries should have to pay for taking jobs away from the US,” said Belinda Durm, who runs a used car showroom in downtown Lorain. “I think the stuff should be made here.”
The US is still reeling from the market turbulence of the past 10 days, unleashed by a president determined to reshape a global trading system he believes is rigged against America.
Trillions were wiped off global equity valuations after Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs on most of the US’s trading partners, which were then suspended after a fierce backlash from investors, lawmakers and billionaire donors to the Republican party.
But Lorain County, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November’s election, is keeping the faith.
“The complaints you get are from Wall Street, which wants instant gratification,” said Nick Jarmoszuk Jr, Skylift’s chief financial officer. “We don’t.”
Some even see an economic upside to the trade war. Alex Seda, manager of O’Reilly Auto Parts, expects a pick-up in sales if tariffs on auto imports push up the price of new vehicles.
“People will have to keep their old cars on the road for longer and for that they’ll need more spare parts,” he said.
Few cities sum up America’s industrial decline better than Lorain. Located on the south-western shore of Lake Erie, it was long a centre of shipbuilding, steel and carmaking, smack in the middle of America’s Midwestern industrial heartland.
But over the past 40 years it has been hollowed out, as companies outsourced their supply chains and moved manufacturing offshore. Its shipbuilding yards closed in 1983; Ford shut down its assembly plant in 2005; US Steel discontinued its Tubular Operations in 2020; and Republic Steel idled its huge rolling mill in 2016.
As its industrial base dwindled, the city became blighted by population decline and urban decay, with poverty rates far above the national average. The biggest employer is now Mercy Health, a big local hospital.
Voters in places such as Lorain proved highly receptive to Trump, who won in industrial Midwest states — including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that have been hit by the exodus of manufacturing. Many Republican voters appear to support the president’s argument that the US could lure companies back by protecting its home market from foreign competition.
“What will come out of [the trade war] is something more equitable than the system we had before ‘liberation day’,” said Kent Savage, chief executive of Velocity Group, an engineering and manufacturing company based in Cambridge, a two-hour drive south of Lorain. “There just wasn’t a level playing field before.”
Even some Democrats support the idea of tariffs. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of the party’s most prominent figures, said last week there was “purpose” to having such levies, although she stressed they “need to be used like a scalpel, not a hammer”.
Some in Lorain are not convinced, however. During Trump’s first term, he imposed a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel, and in 2018 boasted that “idle factories throughout our nation are roaring back to life”. He cited Republic Steel in Lorain as an example.
“We were told that, based on these tariffs, Republic Steel would be restarting production in Lorain and that 1,000 steel industry jobs would come here,” said Jack Bradley, Lorain’s mayor. “That never happened.”
Instead, the mill, which once employed 12,000 people, shuttered completely in 2022, though its rusting, abandoned hulk continues to loom over the city. Bradley condemns the behemoth, owned since 2005 by Mexico’s Grupo Simec, as an “eyesore”.
The mayor said he recently asked Jaime Vigil, president of Republic Steel Corp, whether Trump’s new steel tariffs might prompt him to restart operations in Lorain. “He said they’ve moved away from that,” Bradley said.
The mayor, who is a Democrat, said he was concerned the trade war was more likely to engender economic havoc than an industrial renaissance. He is particularly worried about Ford, which has an assembly plant in nearby Avon Lake. “It will affect supply chains and increase costs, so factories will produce less and lay off their employees,” he warned.
A number of Lorain companies are particularly exposed to the disruption. PC Campana, which makes alloyed cored wire used in steelmaking, depends on calcium and boron from China — both of which will now be hit by 145 per cent tariffs.
“The whole world has been upside down since Covid-19, and now we have the tariff crisis,” said Don Scott, PC Campana’s cored wire division manager.
He does not believe that tariffs can trigger a turnaround. “Manufacturing moved out of the US over the last 50 years and it’s not going to come back in days,” he said. “It takes years.”
Joe Meno, head of JFL Enterprises, a company in nearby Cleveland that sells toys and birthday items to big box retailers such as Walmart, is still reeling from the tariff announcement. Ninety-five per cent of his goods come from Chinese suppliers.
“You have to make really difficult decisions — do I want to bring in inventory that’s going to be unprofitable to sell?” he said. “Or do I want to risk being out of stock for my customers?”
“It’s hard to imagine a world where someone who bought a toy car for $5.99 is now going to buy it for $12.99,” he added.
Even companies that support the tariffs in principle are concerned about possible consequences for their operations.
Jarmoszuk Jr. said manufacturers that relied on components from China were now desperately searching for US-made alternatives. “You’ll have more demand chasing a limited domestic supply,” he said, potentially putting upward pressure on prices.
Savage said many of the electric components that went into Velocity’s products came from China and there were often “no options to source [them] domestically or from other countries”.
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He is also worried that if China drops out as a supplier, “there’s not enough capacity in the domestic or global markets to pick up the slack”. “The effect of this will be shortages and higher prices for everything,” he said.
But Jarmoszuk Jr. is unperturbed. Other countries must dismantle the trade barriers “that are making US goods less competitive” in the world, he said, adding that tariffs would ensure that whole new supply chains would move back to the US.
The disruption would be temporary, he insisted. “It’s like chemotherapy — it’s a strong drug. But it’s going to make you healthy in the end.”
