The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that as U.S. President Donald Trump aggressively erects walls around the American economy in a bid to bring manufacturing jobs back to his country, there is little evidence from his 2018 tariff campaign against foreign steel and aluminum to suggest that will happen. The Globe's Jason Kirby and Mark Rendell write that instead, the latest tariff blockade on those products threatens a repeat of what happened last time: higher prices for consumers and pain for American manufacturers. On Monday, Mr. Trump announced steep tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and aluminum starting March 12. They echo his 2018 duties of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum imposed on Canada and Mexico for roughly one year. A 2024 paper by David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson found that few jobs were created in the protected sectors. "Import tariffs on Chinese and other foreign goods had neither a sizable nor significant effect on US employment in regions with newly-protected sectors," the economists wrote. While the 2018 tariffs did not do much to significantly boost jobs, they did boost prices, by an average 2.4 per cent (steel) and 1.6 per cent (aluminum).