In a 2019 study, Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce found that U.S. industries facing higher input costs from tariffs, including steel-consuming manufacturers, experienced net employment losses rather than gains.
NOT BSTOTAL BS
HARDLY BS — Verdict: Mostly True
Verified by Lenz ·
The Short Version
The claim accurately reflects the study’s main finding: industries more exposed to tariff-related input-cost increases saw employment decline on net, rather than rise. Flaaen and Pierce found that the negative input-cost and retaliation effects outweighed the smaller employment gains from import protection. The wording is slightly compressed because the 2019 paper was a Federal Reserve working paper at the time, and “steel-consuming manufacturers” is an example rather than the paper’s formal category.
Caveats
The 2019 document was a Federal Reserve working paper; later peer-reviewed publication does not reverse the finding, but the label matters for precision.
The paper also found small positive employment effects in some tariff-protected industries; the losses were concentrated in industries more exposed to input costs and retaliation.
“Steel-consuming manufacturers” is a reasonable shorthand for high input-cost exposure, but the paper estimates effects using exposure measures rather than a single named sector category.