Mercer County steelmaker furloughs 80 to 100

A Mercer County steel plant, roiled by U. S. tariffs on imported metals, has furloughed between 80 and 100 workers, with more layoffs possible in the coming weeks.

The steelworkers were laid off the first week of July because of a 25% tariff that the U. S. government put on imported steel last year, said Bob Miller, CEO of NLMK Pennsylvania, which has a flat- rolled steel processing plant in Farrell.

NLMK had relied on its Russian parent corporation for slab steel to supply the U. S. plant, but has been scrambling to find suppliers in countries not affected by the tariff, he said.

“We predicted this over a year ago,” Mr. Miller said. “The outcome is terrible. This is ultimately what tariffs do: In a matter of minutes, they change a global supply chain that took years to develop, just like that.”

NLMK has been unable to find a suitable domestic vendor for the slab steel needed at the plant, and more layoffs are possible as plant output shrinks, Mr. Miller said.

NLMK employs 750 people in Farrell and at a coatings plant in Sharon.

President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum in March 2018 to prop up domestic steelmakers. NLMK’s request for an exemption was turned down.

The Farrell plant — that city’s biggest employer and located 60 miles north of Pittsburgh — makes products used in appliances, industrial HVAC systems and in the automotive and energy industries.

Novolipetsk Steel PAO or NLMK, among the biggest steel plants in Russia, is the parent company of NLMK Pennsylvania.