Just today I listened to BBC's coverage of Trump's steel industry politics. It's quite obvious the employment rate and order backlogs in US raw material production companies has got better due to import steel tariffs, but in the same coverage there were also other voices heard.

Some companies - also part of American metal industry scene - do not benefit from the change. According to the coverage, tariffs are problematic for companies that need high grade steel materials for their end product manufacturing. For some reason I can't understand, there is not enough high grade steel production in US especially regarding thin sheets. Companies needing these type of steel materials buy everything they get from US raw material manufacturers but need to buy the rest from foreign manufacturers. Not sure if I understood or heard it right, but afaik one company boss said 70% of thin high grade metal sheets had to be imported. And thanks to tariffs the cost has risen 25%. That's a lot and shall cause problems fast.

According to comments presented in the coverage there are more jobs in end product design and manufacturing than in raw material production industry. If this costly situation continues more jobs may be jeopardized in the long run than gained.

Now back to Russia-US comparison. When I listened this broadcast I literally thought "US is more and more like Russia". For decades Russia has been a country that produces quite basic things like energy and raw materials in different forms. But when it comes to end products manufactured from these basic raw materials, Russian product quality is low. Value added is poor. The situation is the same in China if you look at end products originally and fully designed and manufactured there and solely by them.

Production value, income, profits and GDP simply increases together with the extent of value added. Concentrating too much on low level production at the cost of high-end consumer production capabilities will be bad option.

Jobs in mining and steel industries are of course important and ppl there have been forgotten for years. For them Trump politics is really good news. But in the long run today's politics may be more effective regarding public relations than regarding big picture financial growth beneficial for the US as a nation.