So much winning

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross went on TV in early March to defend the tariffs and proclaimed they would be “no big deal.” The tariffs, he maintained, would have a “broad” but “trivial” impact on prices.

While holding up a can of Campbell’s soup on live television, Secretary Ross asked, if a can of soup goes up by 2.6 pennies worth of steel, “Who in the world is going to be bothered?” Clearly, a lot more than he thought.

Ask any U.S. manufacturer, and they’ll tell you they need access to competitively priced raw materials to stay viable in the U.S. market and their export markets.

[...]

At the time of [the steel and aluminum tariff] announcement earlier this year, the Commerce Department estimated that it would receive 4,500 exclusion requests from the steel tariff and 1,500 from the aluminum tariffs.

Fast forward to today. U.S. manufacturers so far have filed over six times that amount and are still filing. Commerce wildly underestimated the number of exclusion requests they would receive.

[...]

Commerce estimated it would take 24,000 hours of Commerce staff time to process these requests (four hours per request). By our count, and using Commerce’s own calculations of four hours per request, it would take 178,000 hours, which is equivalent to over 50 people working full time for nearly two years. And the requests are still coming in.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.