U.S. President Donald Trump's China tariffs worth approximately $109 billion will soon hit the U.S. job market.
According to Michael Solomon, co-founder of compensation negotiation company 10x Ascend, Trump's China tariffs will first impact consumers but the labor market is soon to follow.
In an interview with YFi AM, Solomon said “I think we’re going to start to see it in the job markets. I think we’re going to see the unemployment number affected in job growth because it has to impact somewhere in our economy and that’s where the costs are getting absorbed.”
Despite the low unemployment rate for July at just above a 50-year low, Solomon claimed that almost every industry could soon see job cuts due to the U.S.-China trade war. He added “There’s a lot of job loss coming overall in the markets because of technology, but I think in the short-term we’re going to see that in the middle level jobs, the lower level white collar jobs, in the administrative jobs, in restaurants, in retail, in manufacturing of course, and it’s going to have a big impact.”
Solomon pointed out that the ongoing trade war has placed fear upon business executives and have taken action on this. According to him, some hiring freezes are already being implemented.
He added that the surge in automation could also add to the impact of the trade war. An Oxford Economics report last June revealed that 8.5% of the global manufacturing jobs can be taken over by industrial robots by 2030.
While some politicians have called for the need to retain jobs amidst technological advancement, Solomon said “The bottom is going to fall out for tens of millions of Americans over the next few years.”
