The Herald: an unexpected casualty of tariffs?

President Trump’s sweeping new tariffs on Canadian imports —now paused for 30 days — threaten to deliver a fatal blow to America’s already struggling local news industry.

At stake are not only the fate of the Long Island Herald but also the survival of local newspapers across the nation. The reaper? A potential 25 percent tariff on the paper that carries the local news to your doorstep: Canadian newsprint.

Local newspapers are quintessentially American, but the overwhelming majority of the newsprint on which they’re printed comes from our northern neighbor, and there simply aren’t enough paper mills in the U.S. — or elsewhere — to fill even a fraction of the current newsprint demand.

Local print newspapers produce 75 percent of the nation’s news, with 70 percent of national stories originating in local newsrooms, making these newspapers inseparable from America’s constitutionally protected free press. That’s why any tariffs on newsprint threaten local newspapers and equally threaten the very principle of press freedom that dates to our nation’s birth.

The Founding Fathers deemed a free press so crucial to America that they made it the only industry specifically protected in our Constitution, where the First Amendment prohibits the government from interfering with the press, including through indirect means like tariffs. One of our founders, Thomas Jefferson, even declared, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

While there is certainly much to be said about the state of the national news industry — and the president has not been shy about expressing his opinions on that topic — we cannot fall into the trap of lumping all types of news together. National news is often partisan and entertainment driven; local news, however, is consistently nonpartisan and, in fact, brings communities together. Walk into any politician’s office — locally or in Washington — and proudly hanging on their wall is a story from their local newspaper.

Local newspapers cover village board meetings, high school football games and church bake sales. They create local jobs, reflect the values of the communities they serve, promote Main Street businesses, and are usually locally owned small businesses themselves. Republicans, Democrats and Independents agree: Local newspapers are, by far, the most trusted media in the country.

Over the past two decades, America has lost more than one-third (approximately 3,200) of its newspapers, and over 60 percent (43,000-plus) of its local newspaper journalists. Today, more than half of all U.S. counties are “news deserts,” meaning they have, at most, only a single source of news.

An average of more than 2½ newspapers shutter each week in the U.S. — and studies confirm that digital news outlets do not emerge to fill the void. We won’t rehash all of the reasons for this decline — some were self-inflicted, many more resulted from unfair business practices by other industries — but the newspaper industry, already operating on paper-thin margins (no pun intended), cannot afford an increase of 25 percent on its largest expense after payroll.

Newspapers employ nearly 100,000 Americans, in roles from reporters and sales representatives to accountants and manufacturing workers. For every one of those jobs, 2.7 additional jobs are created across the many industries that support newspapers. That’s more than a quarter-million people who are not in the newspaper industry, but rely on it for their own paychecks.

An obvious question is, why not just distribute the news exclusively online? The reasons are myriad, and include the fact that 24 million Americans — most of them in rural communities — still do not have access to reliable broadband internet, and forcing the newspaper industry to move to the unsustainable digital-only business model is tantamount to an unconstitutional burden on the press.

But beyond the impending economic and civic devastation, there’s a clear legal reason why tariffs should not apply to newsprint. President Trump’s Feb. 1 executive order threatening these new tariffs explicitly states that they “shall exclude those [imports] encompassed by 50 U.S.C. 1702(b),” which is part of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, because this part of the federal code provides a list of goods and transactions that a president cannot regulate with tariffs.

50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(3), in particular, states, “The authority granted to the President by this section does not include the authority to regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly, the importation from any country, or the exportation to any country, whether commercial or otherwise, regardless of format or medium of transmission, of any information or informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds.”

A long and convoluted sentence, for sure, but the meaning couldn’t be any clearer: Information and informational materials, including publications (like newspapers) — and in the current case, there is no daylight between newspapers and newsprint — cannot directly or indirectly be subjected to tariffs. This provision has been used to protect the free flow of books, newspapers, films and other media from trade restrictions, particularly in cases involving sanctions on countries such as Cuba and Iran.

So why must newsprint be exempt from any and all tariffs under 50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(3)?

1. Newsprint is the primary medium for printed informational materials. Newspapers and other periodicals are a direct form of protected “information or informational materials” under this statute. Since newsprint is an essential input for newspapers, a restriction on newsprint imports effectively restricts the distribution of protected informational materials.
2. Tariffs on newsprint indirectly regulate the flow of information. If a tariff makes it prohibitively expensive for U.S. newspapers to print, it acts as a de facto restriction on the dissemination of information, which the law explicitly prohibits in both a direct or indirect manner.
3. Precedent supports broad interpretation of informational materials exemptions. Courts have historically ruled that the government cannot restrict imports of books, newspapers, films or other forms of media under this law, even when dealing with sanctioned nations. By extension, restricting the importation of the material necessary to produce newspapers (i.e., newsprint) could be seen as an unconstitutional workaround to limit protected informational materials (as well as free speech, which is protected by the First Amendment).

Even our small, often-privileged corner of the country is not immune from the newspaper industry’s pressures. We’ve recently seen wealthy communities — Scarsdale, Chappaqua and Bedford, to name just a few — lose their local newspapers with no warning.

These newspapers served some of the most affluent, educated communities in the world — no hyperbole. Then, suddenly one morning, residents woke up to discover that their trusted source of local news and community connection had vanished. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. It can happen here. You could lose the Long Island Herald.

That’s why, one year ago, we at Richner Communications Inc. — a Long Island family business for three generations that has published the Herald, today with 25 editions, since 1964 — founded the Empire State Local News Coalition, now a national leader in advocating for public policy that supports the local newspaper industry.

In addition to the Heralds, we print hundreds of other newspapers for our industry colleagues, providing us with a unique, firsthand look at the operations and finances of an industry teetering on the edge.

If newsprint becomes subject to tariffs on Canadian imports, we would not be surprised to see over 30 percent of U.S. newspapers go out of business within a year, and many of the remaining newspapers substantially reduce their frequency and distribution. As the backbone of civic life in hometowns across the U.S., local newspapers don’t deserve to be collateral damage in an international trade war.

The negative impact of newspaper closures cannot be overstated. The data show that when a community loses its source of local news, it experiences more political polarization; more waste, fraud and abuse from government officials and business leaders; higher taxes, from increased municipal borrowing rates; more toxic environmental emissions; more uncontested elections; and lower voter turnout and civic engagement.

A tariff on newsprint would hurt suburban and rural Americans most, shutting down one of the few channels these patriotic citizens have to voice their opinions — and their priorities — against the loud national and city-centric news outlets. And if you think less newsprint will be better for trees and the environment, think again: The paper industry has one of the last remaining interests in maintaining and expanding healthy forests.

The case for exempting Canadian newsprint from any future tariffs is clear, compelling, and backed by civic, economic, constitutional and legal imperatives. We urge President Trump and Howard Lutnick — a native Long Islander who would oversee federal trade policy as the likely next U.S. secretary of commerce — to protect the truly local newspapers of America, and all of the voices in the small towns that these newspapers so devotedly serve.