Trump's tariffs: “It feels like Covid 2.0. So many things are disturbed '| Trump -Zölle

“IMany options, it feels like Covid 2.0. So many things are disturbed so quickly. “Like so many companies all over Donald Trump's America, Matt Katase's craft brewery, Brew Gentleman, has to fight with an amazingly uncertain trade environment.

The Chief Operating Officer of the brewery, Alaina Webber, says: “For the first time, as a company that has been in operation for 15 years, we received explicit e -mails that say: 'On this existing order, you will now increase 30% and then 130%.”

The brewery is based in Braddock in Allegheny Valley in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, where the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, born in Schotten, opened its first steel mill about 150 years ago and founded an industry that supported the industrialization of America.

Today the huge mill is still in operation, but the Trump tariffs claim that the fame of the rust belt cities like this have added thousands of companies in the chaos region.

Everything imports a delivery of 10%; Steel and aluminum 25%; Chinese products, 145%. And much higher “mutual” tariffs in many other countries hang in balance.

For Brew gentlemen, the tariffs even threaten a program of tailor-made Chinese-Maten-beer-tap-handles who are waiting at the docks while negotiating the price with their supplier. “These are now in customs and they will sit there for a while,” says Webber.

The brewery had to turn quickly during the Covid pandemic and switched from beer to the locals in its bar surface to 100% to the production.

Just as it hoped for a “normal” year, the costs of many inputs for the brewing process in the river are.

“You can't start growing New Zealand hops in America immediately,” says Katase, his co-founder. “We use a lot of American hops, but then we have beers that use Australian or New Zealand hops, and we have malt from Canada. If you try to make a traditional German camp, you somehow need German malt.”

At the other end of the city, outside the huge Edgar Thomson Stahlmühle, the workers who are gathered in a Union Social Hall hesitate to chat.

A man says that he and his buddies are about the advantages of the long -term takeover battle for the owner of the facility, US Steel, by Japan's Nippon Steel. “This is a tricky topic,” he says.

But he hopes that Trump's tariffs will be changed in such cities in which shops are closed and many of the gossip plants have broken windows. “I think they may work because we have recently beaten up a beat,” says the steel worker. “America was robbed and abused and I think it's time that we take care of our own and they take care of theirs.”

The international president of the United Steelworker's Union, David McCall based in Pittsburgh, praised Trump's tariffs and described them as a “crucial means of explaining bad actors who are not right to access the US market as a privilege”.

In the nearby headquarters of Steel Valley Authority, which has been supporting companies in this region for decades, his experienced executive director Tom Croft is more skeptical.

“We hear that there is only a lot of uncertainty. The prices are the big thing and the supply chain of the products,” he says. “At the moment it is too early to say it, but people think that it is very similar to the Covid Shutdown.”

He has no objections to the idea of ​​targeted tariffs as part of a broader industrial policy, but he says: “The way they go in front of them asked many of the smaller manufacturers and managers what the hell they will do.”

Joe Biden claimed the tariffs in China, which Trump imposed in his first term, and prepared to intervene to block the Nippon deal. Trump supported the takeover during the campaign, but recently suggested that he did not want us to “go to Japan”.

The debate is raging in the once powerful industrial city of Pittsburgh, which has changed to “Eds and Meds” – Education and Medicine – in recent decades.

Outside the LA Prima Espresso Company in the city strip district, in which the warehouses slowly turn into sophisticated apartments, a series of older men who have gathered breaks out to play cards when asked about Trump's guidelines.

One goes on his head, which indicates that the president is “not good” on the second floor while someone else collapses.

Nick Kirk, who owns a local trucking company and wears a red tie to show his support for Trump, says: “Everyone thinks is that The“Click on the fingers.” Nothing is done so quickly in your personal life. “

Not far away, Joy Lu, the manager of an Asian supermarket, Lotus Food, struggles to keep up with the price hikes at Chinese imports.

“For example, fresh noodles have already increased the price,” she says. “Before we sell for $ 6.99 and then rose to 7.99 US dollars and are now 8.49 US dollars.”

She says that her suppliers have so far been able to prevent the price increases in some products by redeeming them in advance. “Drywashing, you have a lot of inventory, maybe you have a six months in stock. Your price doesn't increase so quickly.”

The lack of deficiency, while the tariffs continue to bite, she said that a supplier has already started to limit orders. “There are five cases per customer, not as before if we can order as many as we want.”

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Along the street in the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, a venerable Italian Deli, the owner Bill Sunseri is rather more phlegmat. He admits that he had to have the price of some cookies because the 10% tariff is merciful. And if the EU faces the 20% “mutual” rate when Trump's 90-day break ends in July, there could be more.

He said he had e -mails from his Italian suppliers the day before the break and said they had already expected the climb. “They increased their inventory costs.”

However, he insists that he is not worried. “I don't think it will happen. I think it's all a negotiation tactic,” he says. “It is the art of the deal. I believe in Donald Trump.”

Even for companies that seem to be a world of Pittsburgh's mother and pop stores and the craft boys, aspects of Trump's politics give a break to think.

Astrobotic is the type of high-tech private sector business that symbolizes Steel City's hopes for the future. It builds Mondlander and is preparing for a planned mission by the end of the year.

The founder and managing director John Thornton says that the tariffs will hardly influence them, since the costs of the technology on the complex vehicles far transferred the material price. Nevertheless, he has to keep an eye on the Trump government's statements because NASA is his largest customer.

“We are very careful what politics is in the room. We have seen in confirmation that Jared Isaacman, who will be the next NASA boss, still talk about the moon and Mars, which is good,” he says.

However, he adds that a large part of his financing comes from the science budget – from which parts of Elon Musk's “Department of Government Efficiency” seems to be determined.

“Our primary program, which is known as commercial moon use services, comes from the science program. So if there is a significant reduction, this could be a problem for us.”

According to Lee Branstetter, Professor of Economics, Lee Branstetter at Carnegie Mellon University says that the restless uncertainty with which every business owner is confronted is a strong force that is pushing on the economy and wonders what effects the profound cuts of Trump will have on the future of his students.

“I think it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have a number of people at the head of the federal government who have no idea what they do,” he says. He points out that Steel employs around 31,000 people in Pennsylvania, while health and education make up 1.3 million jobs.

“How can you decide how you can invest as a company? “I think the answer is that you try not to make a decision as long as possible.

“The consequence of the shift of decisions as long as possible, of course, means that the pace of investment slowed down dramatically.”

These companies will also pause the setting plans, he suggests – while anxious consumers tighten their belts. “It just seems to be a result of this increase in political uncertainty, we will probably find a significant macroeconomic abbreviation in the USA and maybe beyond.”

There are still few signs that this uncertainty is solved. The Finance Minister of Trump, Scott Bessent, repeatedly claimed that a number of trade agreements is nearby, but the president did not seem to be in the negotiation of the mood last week when he described the US economy as “huge, beautiful business”, in which “I set the prices”.

At the moment, real prices, outside of Trump's head, are anything but set – and rethink their supply chains at the hoof as a company in the United States is anything but clear how long the shelves of the “huge, beautiful shop” can remain completely stocked.