President Trump visits Illinois steel mill as Missouri farmers look for clarity

UPDATE: President Donald Trump touted his trade deals Thursday at a steel mill near St. Louis.

The plant in Granite City, Ill. brought jobs back after Trump announced tariffs.

Trump started his speech by thanking CEO David Burrit and the hundreds of workers in the audience. Trump said the trade deals he is working out with different countries are aimed at helping factories, like the plant near St. Louis, to reopen and restaff.

“We don’t wave the white flag, we only wave the flag that we love and it’s called red, white and blue and it’s beautiful, Trump said. “America is fighting back and we’re winning. We’re winning.”

U.S. Steel furloughed hundreds of workers several times in the last decade, once in 2008, and again in late 2015 and early 2016.

Paul Krause, a nearly 30-year employee at Granite City Works, said the president’s speech hit the nail on the head. Many workers ABC 17 News spoke with also said they remember the uncertainty of losing their job and not knowing if or when it would come back.

“It was numerous friends of mine that lost their job and it was really devastating for people to lose what they did,” Krause said.

While the steel workers at the event had mixed feelings about the president himself, all agreed that workers coming back to the mill was a positive.

Some farmers in Missouri fear other countries will retaliate with high tariffs on food. President Trump said farmers should have little to be concerned about. He highlighted the E.U.’s agreement to buy more soybeans from the U.S. as part of trade negotiations, and the federal help the USDA announced Wednesday.

The president said his goal in trade would allow for U.S. factories to reopen and restaff, pushing back on his critics’ assertions that the tariffs would spark a trade war.

“We are not starting trade war,” the president said. “We’ve been in a trade war for many years, and we have lost for many years. But over the last year and a half, we are winning. We are back, and we are winning, and we are winning bigger than anyone understands.”

Eric Bohl, spokesman for the Missouri Farm Bureau, said any increased access to world markets for food helps Missouri farmers.

“Our farms are some of the most productive in the world, and we need free, fair and open opportunities to sell our food and fiber to the 95% of the world’s consumers who don’t live in the United States,” Bohl said.

President Trump took particular aim at China, which he said had taken billions of dollars from the U.S. through intellectual property theft and discrepancies in tariffs charged to the U.S.

ORIGINAL: President Donald Trump will talk trade at a southern Illinois steel mill that brought back hundreds of workers because of new tariffs on foreign steel.

The speech comes one day after the president met with European Union leaders to negotiate aspects of trade. The EU had considered new tariffs on American goods after the U.S. implemented a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum.

President Trump will speak at the U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, a town just outside of St. Louis. The plant brought back nearly 800 workers that had been furloughed by the company in late 2015 and early 2016. U.S. Steel said it expected to see a greater demand for its steel due to the new tariffs.

Agricultural leaders in Missouri have feared what effect a trade war would have on the industry if other countries, like the EU and China, increased tariffs on food. Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, said the $12 billion in federal help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was good news, but did not address would could be a long-term trade issue.

“That being said, it is no substitute for a successful settlement to our ongoing trade disputes with several of our most important agricultural trading partners,” Hurst said in a statement on Wednesday. “Missouri farmers are struggling with low prices and a catastrophic drought and need to see progress in this ongoing tariff war.”

Some in Granite City, though, see the tariffs as a help to them. Mike DeBruce, owner of the Park Grill restaurant near the steel mill, said he had seen a slight increase in business since U.S. Steel brought its workers back.

“For us, it’s a good thing,” DeBruce said. “I’m not sure about everyone else, but for us here in Granite City, the tariffs are a great thing. It put a lot of guys back to work, and gonna help a lot of us in the long run.”

The president is expected to speak at 2:40 p.m.