United States Steel Corporation CEO Mario Longhi is the latest in a growing list of industry executives predicting economic improvements for the nation’s working class if the incoming presidential administration slashes taxes and regulations.
Heavy government regulation of industry combined with a depressive economic environment has forced the steel company and others like it to lay off thousands of American workers in recent years.
Longhi says that Trump’s America-first trade proposals, which could slow the import of foreign steel products, and efforts to walk back Obama regulations will mean a new era of “fairness” for American industry.
“There was a point in time in the past couple years that I was having to hire more lawyers to try to interpret these new regulations than I was hiring … engineers. That doesn’t make any sense,” Longhi said.
The positive outlook means companies like his will prepare to make new investments in the U.S. economy.
“We already structured to do some things, but when you see in the near future improvement to the tax laws, improvements to regulation, those two things by themselves may be a significant driver to what we’re going to do,” Longhi told MSNBC.
The CEO said that forecasts for overall economic growth at or above 3.5 percent in the near future has U.S. industry heads confident about their ability to re-hire thousands of workers laid off in recent years.
“I’d be more than happy to bring back the employees we’ve been forced to lay off during that depressive period,” he said.
Since Trump’s election, U.S. Steel stock has jumped by 80 percent. Similar stock price increases, despite mainstream economists’ warnings that U.S. markets would tumble if Trump won last month, are occurring across all manner of industry as investors bet on a production boom in the months ahead.