Future home of Cooper Tires
It’s another chapter of the lesson titled “How hamfisted and shortsighted industrial policy kills jobs.” Copper Tires, American’s second-largest tire manufacturer, and one of the few significant tire manufacturers left in the country, is about to be sold to India. The company became a victim of President Obama’s much too cozy relationship with the union machine. In September 2009, and prodded by the Steelworkers Union, Obama slapped a 35 percent punitive tariff on Chinese car and light truck tires exported to the USA. Ostensibly geared to protect American jobs from a flood of cheap Chinese tires, the policy was an outright failure. It did not stop imports of low-cost tires. They were made in other countries, and came to America at tariffs even lower than those originally on Chinese tires. [ There is more … ]
