President Trump likes tariffs, he sees them for many things, and he has implemented tariffs before. He may do them again, but given he has done them before, what were the results?

In an article by Jason Kirby and Mark Rendell of Reuters, the short answer was higher prices for consumers and pain for American manufacturers.

A 2024 paper by David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson found that few jobs were created in the protected sectors. Import tariffs on Chinese and on goods had neither a sizable nor significant effect on US employment in regions with newly protected sectors. Foreign retaliatory tariffs had clear negative employment impacts particularly on agriculture, and these harms were only partly mitigated by compensatory subsidies.

While the 2018 tariffs didn’t do much to significantly boost jobs, they did boost prices.

A recent study by the US International Trade Commission assessed the impact of the steel and aluminum tariffs on production, prices and downstream industries. It estimated prices went up 2.4% in steel and 1.6% in aluminum.

US Steel and aluminum producers ramped up production after the tariffs, $1.5 billion more steel and $1.3 billion more aluminum. However, the tariffs had a significant negative impact on downstream industries.

Industrial machinery, cutlery, and auto parts and manufacturing were all hit hard causing a decrease in production values of $3.4 billion.

The biggest beneficiaries of the tariffs in 2018 were American steel producers, whose profits surged.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, similar to all government actions there will be winners and losers. In the case of steel and aluminum, the story is 2018 was if you owned the producers that is a good thing, if you own the companies that use the materials that was a negative thing. If President Trump goes ahead with his proposals, be sure to evaluate your holdings and make adjustments.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.