Comment on Trump's trade war threatens the U.S. newspaper industry

STERLING – As a longtime editor of small-town newspapers, Jeff Rogers has seen his industry face the collapse of print advertising, the rise of the internet and more. Today, his 18 employees work in a newsroom that puts out two daily newspapers for towns only 16 minutes apart, the Daily Gazette in Sterling and the Dixon Telegraph, which started more than a century and a half ago. Each publishes a few stories a day on its website and Facebook page – a sign of the times – but still tries to preserve a local print readership, putting its full reports in the newspapers that are available by home delivery and in metal boxes dotting the local downtown areas. The newspapers, like the staff, are leaner than they were a decade ago, with fewer reporters to write about crime, schools and youth sports, as well as to craft obituaries for their aging readership. And now they're facing a new and unexpected threat: President Donald Trump's confrontational trade policies. Last year, in one of the Trump administration's first actions on trade, the U.S.