Mike Bost Jobs Lies Illinois

Mike Bost Says Trump's Tariffs Put "All 3,000 of Those People" Back to Work in Granite City. His Own Press Release Said 500.

When he said it in March 2026, the Granite City mill had about 1,110 workers and neither blast furnace was making steel. One had been down since 2019 — a year after the tariffs. And the plant isn't in his district anymore.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 10, 2026

Mike Bost Says Trump's Tariffs Put "All 3,000 of Those People" Back to Work in Granite City. His Own Press Release Said 500.

Ask a politician about tariffs in southern Illinois and you'll get Granite City. The U.S. Steel mill there is the local proof text for whether steel tariffs work.

Here is what Mike Bost told the Effingham Daily News on March 6, 2026:

"Because of Trump wisely using the 232 Tariffs, when he came back in six months after he was elected and used the 232 the way it was supposed to be used, all 3,000 of those people went back to work. So I think that they're a very appropriate tool to be used wisely, and I think that people need to understand that."

All 3,000 of those people went back to work. It's a clean, memorable number. It is also not what happened, and the best witness against it is Mike Bost.

His own press release said 500

On March 7, 2018, Bost's office put out a statement with this headline: "Bost Statement on Bringing 500 Jobs Back to Granite City Works."

The release says U.S. Steel would restart one of the plant's two blast furnaces, and that "the company anticipates calling back approximately 500 employees beginning this month." Bost, then co-chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus, called it "a big victory for the hardworking steel families in Granite City."

Later in 2018 U.S. Steel restarted the second furnace and brought on about 300 more workers. Five hundred plus three hundred is eight hundred. It is not three thousand.

And then the furnaces went back down — with the tariffs still in place

This is the part the tariff story always skips.

The mill's first blast furnace has been idle since 2019 — one year after the restart Bost celebrated, with the Section 232 tariffs fully in effect. The second was temporarily idled in the fall of 2023, and as St. Louis Public Radio reported, that "quickly became indefinite," costing hundreds more jobs. For more than two years the plant made no steel at all — it just processed slabs shipped in from other mills.

The tariffs did not prevent any of that. They were there the whole time.

What the mill actually looked like the week he said it

Bost gave that interview on March 6, 2026. At that moment, Granite City Works employed about 1,110 people and neither blast furnace was producing steel.

The second furnace relit the weekend of March 28, 2026 — three weeks after his interview — following a December 2025 announcement by U.S. Steel. United Steelworkers Local 1899 president Craig McKey told St. Louis Public Radio the union expects to bring back roughly 450 more positions, which would put total employment "closer to 1,300."

Thirteen hundred, if everything goes right, is a good day for Granite City. It is worth celebrating. It is still less than half of "all 3,000."

The restart wasn't the tariffs — it was a corporate deal with a two-year clock

The reason the furnace came back on isn't Section 232. It's the Nippon Steel purchase of U.S. Steel, finalized June 18, 2025.

Under the national security agreement attached to that sale, Nippon cannot close, idle, or sell Granite City Works before June 18, 2027 without presidential sign-off. That is a two-year protection, and it expires next summer.

So the honest version of the Granite City story is: an ownership change with a legally binding open-for-two-years clause got the furnace lit, and the guarantee runs out in June 2027. That's a much more precarious thing to tell steelworkers than "all 3,000 went back to work."

One more thing: it isn't his district

Granite City was in Illinois's 12th District when Bost put out that 2018 press release. It isn't now. After the 2022 redistricting, Granite City and most of the Metro East moved into the 13th District, represented by Democrat Nikki Budzinski — who issued the statement as the plant's congresswoman when the furnace restarted.

Bost is entitled to talk about a plant he once represented and worked on. But he's using it in 2026 to sell tariffs to voters in a district that doesn't include it, with a jobs number that his own office never claimed and that the mill has never hit since the layoffs.

Why the exaggeration matters here

Steel tariffs are not free. They protect the mills that make steel by raising the price for everyone who buys it — the manufacturers, farmers, and builders who are also Bost's constituents. Whether that trade is worth it is a real argument. "All 3,000 of those people went back to work" is not an argument; it's a number that ends one.

We wrote about a neighboring Indiana Republican who made the same pitch in Erin Houchin Wrote an Op-Ed Called 'Trump's Tariffs Are Reviving American Manufacturing.' Indiana Then Lost 9,148 Factory Jobs. The pattern is identical: pick the one plant that reopened, round the number up, and don't mention the years it sat cold.

Granite City deserves better than being a talking point. So do the people who have to decide whether to believe one.