1 March 2018: Trump announces steel and aluminum tariffs
President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminum, surprising even some of his own advisers. The Dow dropped by hundreds of points as investors feared a trade war, while shares of domestic steelmakers like US Steel jumped. The tariffs did not save the industry, and US Steel was later sold to Japan's Nippon Steel. Protection is not the same as competitiveness.
The lesson: Tariffs can lift a stock for a while, but they rarely fix a business's underlying problems.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in US Steel at the start of 2018 → $1,528 today, vs $2,519 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2018, the year it happened. That is 1.5 times the money, but $991 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What US Steel teaches: Cyclical stocks look cheapest when earnings peak and most expensive at the bottom, so buying on recent profits in heavy industry often means buying the top.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $27.00 | $2,037 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $36.00 | $1,528 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $11.00 | $5,000 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought US Steel? Every starting year and the full story →
More US Steel history
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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