This is a letter I wrote in response to a communication from Senator Bill Nelson in which he voiced his opposition to President Trump’s tariff policies.  The Senator cited a single industry spokesperson who claimed that there would be a catastrophic loss of jobs due to those trade measures.  I felt the need to rebut his false premises and statements.  Enjoy!  (Senator Nelson’s letter to constituents is at the bottom of the page)

Hello Senator Nelson:
I want to reply to your letter (even though I know there’s scant chance you’ll read it) because I think it’s important that our country work together rather than fracture along political lines.  

I support President Trump’s efforts to bring American jobs back to our country via tariffs and other trade restrictions where necessary.  Congress has, through years of indifference or outright hostility to their own constituents, especially those at the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder in blue collar and manufacturing jobs, created a crisis that I fear is too late to correct…but at least the President is making an effort.

You and your colleagues (on both sides of the aisle) have spent entire careers ignoring the massive hemorrhaging of good jobs to our overseas competitors like China and Mexico.  You have done all you can to import cheap labor into our country from overseas-cheap labor that undercuts the wages of native-born working class people.

And now you say you are worried about the potential loss of some jobs in the boating industry?  Where were you on building the wall?  Where were you on lowering taxes?  Where were you on cutting government spending?  Where were you on ending the scam of H1B visas?  Where were you when you saw the plight of the everyday Joe and decided he just didn’t matter?

The fact is, President Trump is the only person in either party who has spoken up for the working class in a long, long time.  And not only spoken up-he’s actually tried to do something about it.  And now that he does, you want to act as an obstructionist.  I would ask you to reconsider your position vis-a-vis the boating industry (which I suspect is a contributor to your campaign coffers via a PAC) and consider the impact on ALL Americans if we continue down the road we’ve traveled…allowing our so-called trading partners free access to our markets while theirs remain closed, and allowing aliens (both legal and illegal) to steal jobs away from the rest of us.

I’m tired of business as usual in Washington, DC.  Most of us out here don’t have any influence.  We aren’t CEO’s.  We don’t run PACs. We don’t run newspapers or TV stations.  We aren’t “inside the Beltway”.  We don’t attend your lavish parties, rub shoulders with the rich and famous, or enjoy the obscenely rich benefits you vote for yourselves.  But we still pay for it…all of it.  Taxation without representation?  You bet!  And I, for one, am damned tired of it.

Enough!  Change, right now, or quit. And do us all a favor.  Refuse your retirement package.  We can’t afford that, either.

Sincerely

Jonathan Haley
US citizen, veteran, and patriot

ps-You said that “the boating industry as a whole could lose as much as 650,000 jobs if these tariffs stay in place”.  That isn’t true, not even by the exaggerated standards of the leading boating industry PAC.  From their website, they only admit to 650,000 total American jobs in that category.  Meaning, that even if you swallow whole the inflated numbers Correct Craft gave you, The USA would have to lose every single boating job for your CEO’s dire prediction to come true.  And every ancillary business even remotely related to boating would also have to go belly up.  That’s a pretty bold prediction based on a tariff that’s barely in place, isn’t it?  Are you really that naive?  I don’t know how much we the taxpayers pay for your staff, but I guess we don’t pony up enough for fact-checking.

Here is Senator Nelson’s Letter to his constituents: