In his State of the Union speech in January, 2012 (and throughout the following campaign), President Barack Obama stated, “We’ve brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration –- and it’s made a difference. Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires.” To be more precise, it’s been calculated that 1200 American tire manufacturing jobs were saved, at a cost of $1.1 billion to American tire consumers (about $900,000 per job). Was that a good deal for Americans as a whole?