My question: How will American steel workers fare as a result of this tariff? I heard the head of a steel workers union on NPR welcome this tariff and he sounded as if their prayers have been answered! — James C., Brooklyn

PK: We will gain a few jobs in steel. But we’ll lose jobs in lots of other, “downstream” industries like autos. Most studies of the 2002 steel tariffs say that they cost jobs on net. So yes, steel workers get a little, but at what cost to other workers?

I live very near a HUGE rusted-out steel plant, Bethlehem Steel in Steelton, Pa. I came here 44 years ago and it had already started its long sad road to its present obsolescence. Trump described this phenomenon in his rollout. He then had union workers talk about the production reductions to 20 percent from the heyday of domestic steel production.

What source of funding could possibly come in and want to turn this 3.5-mile row of rusted barned eyesore around? Billions of dollars of investment would be necessary. The ideas of “Making America Great Again” seem to be based in recreating the economy of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. This and the return of coal to the high ridges of Pennsylvania seem a distant memory. Is revitalization of these old industries even a possibility? Aren’t the jobs from the Rust Belt too expensive to get back? Or would another community’s landscape be blighted instead? — CC, New Cumberland, Pa.

PK: There’s no way to bring back all those steel plants and steel jobs, even if we stopped all imports. Partly that’s because a modern economy doesn’t use that much steel, partly because we can produce steel using many fewer workers, partly because old-fashioned open-hearth plants have been replaced by mini-mills that use scrap metal and aren’t in the same places. So this is all a fantasy.

What is your critique of the anti-trade argument made by the Warren-Sanders wing of the Democratic Party: that free trade has been bad for the (proverbial) American worker and has been a significant contributor to America’s rising income and wealth inequality? Is the answer simply that the benefits of free trade — lower prices generally — are diffuse and therefore underappreciated, whereas the costs — worker dislocation in particular sectors — are concentrated and thus easier to highlight? How much of America’s increase in income inequality over the past half-century do you attribute to free trade?