President Trump told a Montana crowd on Thursday that he has high expectations for his tariff policy, predicting an end to China’s practice of robbing America’s “piggy bank.”

Alabama officials are not so optimistic on this first day since the tariffs were enacted, as they wait to see what kind of consequences are brought to the state’s automobile and agricultural industries by the Chinese, as well as any other possible forms of retaliation.

“We’ve not really faced a situation quite like this, in terms of how trade has been impacted on this scale, at least in our lifetime,” Alabama Secretary of Commerce Greg Canfield told Yellowhammer News on Friday.

Canfield expressed two concerns about Trump’s retaliation-inducing tariff policy, the first of which is the loss of jobs in the state’s booming automobile industry.

“It’ll make those goods and services more expensive, which reduces production and when you reduce production to a certain point, you have ensuing job loss,” Canfield said.

He is also concerned about the insecurity that a mounting trade war brings to international investors, something he says he has already seen through a slowdown of certain projects underway in Alabama.

“That doesn’t mean that they are pulling the investment, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to invest,” Canfield said. “It means that they’re delaying their final decision, waiting on the outcome of this trade situation so that they can better understand what their cost and risk factors are going to be.”

Canfield says he and Gov. Ivey support the president’s desire to improve the international trade environment but that a tariff approach may backfire.

“If the goal is to protect American jobs, this strategy might run counter to that,” he said.

Gov. Kay Ivey has written several letters to the Trump Administration expressing her concerns about how the tariffs might affect Alabama’s jobs but those concerns have been given little attention.

@jeremywbeaman is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News