Trump’s tariffs—bad for local newspapers, bad for fruit, bad for Michigan
Sun reporter Linda Dewey and editor Jacob Wheeler march with the Glen Arbor Sun banner in this year’s Glen Arbor Fourth of July parade. Photo by Taro Yamasaki.
Opinion by Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor
Local newspapers that inform citizens, hold the powerful accountable, and celebrate our close-knit communities are crucial for the lifeblood of democracy. Local news helps us identify ourselves, our neighbors, and the bond we have in common. In this edition of the Sun, local news includes the story of a cherished restaurant that just changed hands; the reminder of an upcoming rural fair; the celebration of a quirky animal parade; the portrait of a local farmer who works with migrant labor; the meticulous analysis of complex state laws governing who owns our inland lakes and who gets to use them. Local news is important to our daily lives. Without it, we would be adrift.
You may have seen the Glen Arbor Sunpresence in this year’s Glen Arbor Fourth of July parade. Reporter Linda Alice Dewey and I marched with a banner that sported founding father Thomas Jefferson’s famous quote: “Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”
In this country the press is free, despite the acting president’s insistence on vilifying journalists in front of frenzied crowds. Nevertheless, as you know, we in the news media have suffered in recent years. Corporate consolidations have forced mass layoffs; the Internet and social media have redrawn the map; and demagogues at podiums malign us as convenient scapegoats.
The latest blow to local news is the current administration’s shortsighted, illogical tariffs on newsprint from Canada—the source of most of the ink you read in papers throughout the Midwest. US Commerce Department tariffs on non-domestic newsprint has caused prices to increase by 32 percent in 2018, reports Greenville-based Stafford Media, which prints this newspaper along with many others in Michigan. The price increase has forced Stafford to raise our printing prices by about 3 percent; others have seen a painful 8-10 percent increase. In an industry with already small profit margins, this hurts.
The tariffs—spurred by politics, and by an isolated complaint from a newspaper mill in Washington State—are illogical because our domestic newspaper industry is wholly dependent on importing Canadian ink. North Pacific Paper Co. is one of only five remaining paper mills in the United States. None are based in the Midwest. The cheapest and closest source of newsprint for Stafford and others is our northern neighbor. These tariffs hurt newspapers, which hurts their ability to publish news, and that hurts citizens.
“Our customers are all very frustrated by these cost increases,” says John Moy, Stafford’s vice president of sales. “They happened without much thought about the impact it would have on small newspaper publishers. Some of our customers have had to cut back on page counts, on the quantity of color pages, or on the number of copies they print.”
“I’m in favor of protecting American jobs, but you have to look at our industries, individually, to see where those jobs are. The bipartisan reaction we’ve seen (in Congress and among state lawmakers) to these tariffs is that this is no way to protect American jobs. Instead, it will cost American jobs.”
Stafford, the News Media Alliance, and other members of the Stop Tariffs on Printers and Publishers Coalition (STOPP: learn more at StopNewsPrintTariffs.org) anxiously await key decisions this month from the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission. The Alliance and STOPP are engaging lawmakers and working hard to stop these tariffs from becoming final.
“Right now, we’re at the edge of a wildfire, we’re beating the hell out of it with our coats,” Wes Smith, publisher of View Newspaper Group, which prints 15 community newspapers in Michigan’s thumb, recently told Bridge Magazine. “It’s having a big impact … Maybe you cut the pages out of the paper. Maybe you have to cut staff. Maybe you have to cut benefits. That’s what every newspaper of any size is faced with right now.”
The Leelanau Enterprise, this county’s longtime paper of record—and a reliably conservative voice—weighed in on the newsprint tariff fiasco in March: “Tariffs will not help U.S. paper producers, but they will result in job losses within the newspaper industry. Perhaps that’s why the industry organization for U.S. paper producers, the American Forest and Paper Association, does not support a complaint filed by one of it’s own members.”
In short, what’s bad for the local newspaper industry is bad for our communities.
Tariffs on fruit, tariffs on the auto industry
Trump’s tariffs on goods from Canada, the European Union and China have resulted in retaliatory tariffs from those countries. Those tariffs are targeted to hurt American workers—often from populations that backed him in the 2016 election.
Here in northern Michigan, fruit is king. According to Julie Gordon with the Cherry Marketing Institute in Dewitt, most of Michigan’s cherry business is processed cherries, which isn’t currently affected by Chinese tariffs. Nevertheless, the subject of tariffs has many fruit farmers privately concerned because they don’t know what the next round of tariffs will include. Some worry that future tariffs could include processed or tart cherries. Michigan exported more than $30 million in tart cherry products in 2016—an increase of 64 percent from 2007.
Graceland Fruit, which is based in Frankfort and employs 295 workers, has reason to worry about China’s tariffs on cranberries. China is Graceland’s fastest growing market. In 2013 it sent five shipping containers full of cranberries to China; this year it will sell approximately 50 containers. According to the Traverse City Record-Eagle, Graceland opened a sales office in China in May and currently has three full-time sales representatives working there. Graceland hasn’t yet lost any Chinese customers, but in a volatile trade war, it ought to be nervous.
Michigan is particularly vulnerable to shifts in international trade, Bridgereported last month: “Trade is the backbone of the state economy. International trade comprised $200 billion of total state GDP of $514 billion in 2017—at 38.9 percent, a greater share than any other state. … And while Trump tweets that ‘trade wars are good and easy to win,’ economists are skeptical.”
Check out Bridge Magazine for excellent coverage of the impact the tariff war is having on Michigan’s automotive, steel and soybean industries.
