Rust Belt Despair: West Virginia Workers Forced to Find New Jobs as Plant Closes from Lack of Tariffs

John Binder 26 Apr 2024

Hundreds of West Virginia workers have been thrown back into job hunting in a labor market with slashed wages as a plant in Weirton closed last week. The plant closure comes as the federal government refused to impose tariffs on cheap imported tin.

“It’s a tough situation. We’re used to working locally and making a decent wage. Everything [else] around here is a 40 percent pay cut,” Dan Strapazzon, 41 years old, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about finding a new job.

Strapazzon, along with about 900 others, were told in February they would be laid off at Weirton’s Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. tin plant.

The reason for the closure, executives said, is because the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) refused to allow the Commerce Department to impose tariffs on unfairly subsidized and cheap imported tin products from Canada, China, Germany, and South Korea.

“… the ITC shockingly ruled against [the] imposition of tariffs, keeping the uneven playing field in place and making it impossible for us to viably produce tinplate,” Cleveland-Cliffs executives said in a statement about the plant closure.

Last week, many of the laid-off Cleveland-Cliffs workers headed to a job fair in the hopes of finding nearby work with similar wages and benefits. Some of the workers said they may get out of the industry altogether because of its instability.

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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/26/rust-belt-despair-west-virginia-workers-forced-find-new-jobs-plant-closes-lack-tariffs/

Done for the day.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) Detections in Livestock

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and State veterinary and public health officials are investigating an illness among dairy cows.

As we learn more about this evolving situation, APHIS will continue to provide confirmatory testing for samples from livestock as well as guidance for producers, veterinarians, and state animal health officials. As the situation changes, we will continue to post updated information at the links below. ...............

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza/hpai-detections/livestock

As bird flu spreads in cows, here are 4 big questions scientists are trying to answer

It's been a month since the surprising discovery of bird flu in dairy cattle, and each week seems to bring more surprises.

Take the latest revelation: viral fragments in retail milk.

Scientists don't view this as an immediate threat to human health.

Genetic material is not the same as infectious virus and pasteurization is expected to inactivate the virus in milk, but the findings speak to the broader uncertainty about the extent of the spread.

"There's so many critical things that we still need to know to get a better perspective on how bad this is, or maybe it's not so bad," says Dr. Rick Bright, a virologist and the former head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Federal health agencies started sharing more details publicly this week, but Bright says there's still not enough transparency.

"It's the void that just leaves everyone nervous," he says

Other scientists say the reality is that there are still many unresolved questions about this outbreak, given how novel it is.

"There's a couple big unknowns at this point," says Louise Moncla, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Here's what scientists who are tracking the virus still want to know:
How widespread is the virus in dairy cattle?

That's still far from clear.

While the official tally shows it's been detected in eight states and just over 30 herds, the actual number could be much larger.

First of all, there hasn't been widespread testing in cattle.

The fact that viral material is now being found in retail milk suggests "this virus is probably spread around quite a bit," says Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee.

On Thursday, the FDA said that preliminary results from nationwide samples of retail milk indicate about one in five samples are positive for viral traces. A survey of retail milk in the Midwest found 58 out of 150 samples were positive, according to Andrew Bowman at the Ohio State University. ....................

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/04/26/1247479100/bird-avian-flu-cows-cattle-milk-virus-unanswered-questions

Don't worry... Hunger is a great teacher. and Hunger is a'coming...

It certainly is. But how many of today's urban youth will learn the correct lesson? Or just go to stealing and killing to get what they want.