Steel tariffs place the largest US manufacturer of nails on the brink of extinction

Steel tariffs could force the country's largest nail manufacturer to close or relocate to Mexico.

The Mid-Continent nails plant in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, has laid off 60 of its 500 workers last week due to rising steel costs. The company charges the tariff of 25% on imported steel. Nail orders dropped by 50% after the company increased its prices to face higher steel costs.

The company may close production at Labor Day, unless the Commerce Department grants it an exclusion from paying tariffs, said company spokesman James Glassman to Poppy Harlow. CNN.

Mid-Continent Nail is "on the brink of extinction," he said.

Glassman said that the company could move to Mexico, where it could buy steel without customs duties, and then export the finished nails to the US without duty, which do not apply than to raw materials.

"It's obviously an option," said Glassman about his move to Mexico. "It's absolutely something this company does not want to do, it wants to save jobs in Poplar Bluff, Missouri."

Glassman has called President Donald Trump's trade policy misguided. He noted that the company has doubled its workforce since 2013, and has prospered despite increased competition from China.

Related: Harley-Davidson will move some of the production out of the United States after retaliatory tariffs

Approximately 21,000 US companies filed an application for tariff exclusion. At a Senate hearing on June 20, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that Mid-Continent filed an application for exclusion only two days earlier.

"I do not depreciate at all their situation, but given the importance of this for them, it is very unfortunate that they have waited all these weeks to file the application," he said. "Under the authority that has been granted to us, there is a process that we must follow."

The US Chamber of Commerce has estimated that 2.6 million US jobs are at risk due to the Trump administration's radical trade policies, although this estimate includes the impact of the end of NAFTA. Rates that have already been proposed could cost the US economy about 700,000 jobs by the summer next year, according to Moody 's Analytics.

Related: How a trade war could turn into a recession

The Missouri region where the plant is located has voted 80% for President Trump. Glassman said that he could not say if people still supported the president.

"They are scared, they are worried about their family, it 's not like there were loads of other jobs in the manufacturing sector," he said. . "If I were a worker from the Middle Continent, I would be extremely unhappy with what this administration does."

– Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the number of jobs expected by Moody's would be lost due to currently advertised rates.

CNNMoney (New York) First published on June 26, 2018: 12:02