Steel suppliers could face US’ hardening stance on imports
NEW YORK: Asian steel suppliers, particularly from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan could face a hardening of stance in respect of exports to the United States.
This follows the election of Donald Trump as the next US President and the sensitive issue of steel dumping by foreign suppliers.
The president of the US Steel Manufacturers’ Association ( SMA) Philip K. Bell said he looked forward to working with the new administration, as well as Congress, to advance policies supporting the health and vitality of the country’s steel industry.
He said among the SMA’s priorities in 2017 is to strengthen participation in the Steel Caucus and educate new policymakers, in recalling that steel issues received an unprecedented level of attention during the presidential election campaign.
“The industry must work to maintain this focus and address the challenges facing steelmakers such as global steel overcapacity,” he added.
US steelmakers, many of whom had dreaded the enforcement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, were elated to hear Trump’s pledge to rip up international trade deals and fight the flood of cheap foreign steel imports plaguing the industry for years.
Trump vowed during the election campaign to push a major infrastructure spending bill through Congress, creating thousands of jobs through heightened demand for steel to build roads and bridges, airports and tunnels.
Peter Campo, the president of Brazil steelmaker Gerdau’s North American Long Steel operation in Tampa, expressed optimism for a “substantial” upside from Trump’s election.
The company is closing down its Calvert City steel mill in Western Kentucky because of cheaper steel
The industry must work to maintain this focus and address the challenges facing steelmakers such as global steel overcapacity.
imports and falling demand.
Gerdau’s North American unit, which provides nearly 25 per cent of the steel used in America’s roads and bridges, is well positioned to benefit from a multi-billion dollar infrastructure spending package.
This is, if, the Republicancontrolled Congress backs its own incoming President.
Most steelmakers are confident that Trump’s presidency will benefit them because of his tough stance on cheap imports.
Anti- dumping rules and countervailing duties have kept China from directly flooding the US steel market with cheap imports.
But there have been ways to get around it, such as using third countries that do not face the same barriers in imports.
US steelmakers complain about hot-rolled coils supplied by Turkey and other countries like South Korea.
Executives of steel companies at steel industry events, including the world’s largest steel conference, the Steel Success Strategies in New York, said that of the 120 million tonnes of steel used in the US this year, about 30 million was imported.
Simplistic as their calculation might sound, some steel executives even suggest that about 30 per cent more workers could be employed if all the steel used was produced in the US.
They also argue that the domestic steel industry also offers several competitive advantages against foreign imports, including a much quicker supply chain.
Time is of crucial importance in construction projects.
The SMA has complained about “unfairly traded exports” as it pursues a high-profile trade case on steel rebars against Turkey, Japan and Taiwan.
Philip K. Bell, president of the US Steel Manufacturers’ Association
The association complains that aggressive state intervention by foreign governments, notably China, was perhaps the greatest threat to the US steel industry.
The Chinese, in particular, have angered US steel manufacturers over the Chinese government’s direct assistance to the country’s steelmakers with subsidised land, tax reductions and other benefits.
Chinese steel production between 2001 and 2014 grew about seven times the growth in production in the rest of the world.
The US steel industry also laments the fact that while Chinese, South Korean and Turkish producers enjoy access to the US market, its own exports to these countries has made little headway.
US steel exports to China have fallen since 2008 as China has allegedly made a deliberate attempt to exclude foreign steel products from its domestic market.
From over half a million workers in the 1970s, the US steel industry today has roughly 150,000 jobs.
Stricter environmental regulations have also inflated production costs and forced companies to cut jobs in order to remain profitable.
US steelmakers argue that imported steel produced under less stringent environmental regulations, releases up to ten times more carbon dioxide ( CO2) into the atmosphere, by the time it arrives in the country.
They say future international agreements requiring steel importers to reduce CO2 emissions would lessen the competition pressure on them. — Bernama