President Donald J. Trump has had a very controversial presidency up to this day. Since he has been in office, many of his cabinet have resigned or been fired for disagreeing with him, and many things have changed. He rages on twitter, he argues with peers, and every day it seems this cycle repeats. Recently he imposed a tariff on steel and aluminum imports, and later tweeted about trade wars being good and easy to win. Before that he put tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines.

The press went crazy with controversy about the steel and aluminum tariffs, everyone seems to have an idea about what it will do to the economy. Steel now has a 25% tariff, and aluminum has a 10% tariff.

Environmentalists have argued about what the mining for more steel and aluminum will do to the environment, and the ecosystem. Mining can cause severe ecological damage, and affect biodiversity in species whose habitats are near mining sites, as well as water pollution after a mine is abandoned. In my opinion, one of the governments jobs is to provide citizens with a safe and clean environment.

President Trump says that the tariffs will help our economy, but many economic experts have expressed their concerns that he’s wrong. With the new school being put in place, prices on imported steel and aluminum concerned me, but fortunately, I heard that the metal that is being used for the new school is already paid for.

This doesn’t mean that we’re in the clear though. Future projects for school improvement are going to cost extra, if the tariffs remain in place until then, and the schools already seem timid to spend as much money as I believe they should.

Central Kitsap High School has been having problems for quite some time with the building that we’re in, and only now are we actually building a better one. They’re not even going to sell the building because it’s not worth fixing.

Steel is expensive as it is, and the good stuff that was made in America costs even more. Aluminum is much more expensive, take it from a student in West Sound Tech taking the welding course they provide, aluminum is very valuable.

I understand that President Trump is trying to help our economy, and hope to fix our debt, and he does make some valuable points, but from a consumers perspective, and a students perspective, the tariffs cause more problems than they solve. However it did make a Republican senator and a Democratic senator agree on something, so at least something positive has come out of it.