Foreign product is often subsidized
Together, they often can piece together the puzzle and pinpoint the origins of a bid. And frequently, the answer goes back to one place: China.
“Impossibly low steel prices are a dead giveaway. When steel is priced below market value, it is clearly coming from a statesubsidized source like China. That distorts the free market and costs us American jobs,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
The largest steel producers in the world, China’s factories are mostly governmentowned.
The factories keep a mammoth workforce busy — so busy, in fact, China can produce 700 million more tons of steel annually than it needs. With a glut of government-subsidized product, it floods the global market — often avoiding U.S. duties and tariffs by pumping raw material through countries like Vietnam, Turkey and South Korea, which shape it into slabs or coils and stamp it as their own.
The bottom-barrel prices create havoc for the American industry — which is currently operating at about 70% of its capacity, and producing only Trinity Products recently 80 million tons of steel a year. bought a 10-acre lot in Fairless
Robert Griggs, 61, who runs Hills, Pa., to serve Northeast his family steel-pipe business clients. The land formerly held a from a 45-acre plant in steel mill that was forced to close. St. Charles, Mo., has witnessed “We load the pipe on rail cars, the industry’s destruction the cheapest way to ship, and firsthand. He and 175 employees send it to Pennsylvania, where try to keep the money flowing. workers unload it,” Griggs said.
“We built this company together “From there, it goes to wherever over 38 years and I love it . . . . our client needs it.” But if I had known we’d end Griggs hopes his increased up competing with governmentsubsidized efficiency will put Trinity Products steel from a foreign ahead when it comes to bidding country, I might not have gotten for big New York projects. involved,” Griggs said. He also invested $1 million a
His company, Trinity Products, year into his company for the ships steel pipes ranging past five years — all to get more from 24 inches wide to 127 competitive. Despite that, Trinity inches all across the country — Products lost four New York-area but particularly to New York. projects in the past six months.
The winning bids all had one thing in common: foreign steel.
“That was roughly $17 million in potential work we lost,” said Griggs. “In one year, I usually get about $25 to $30 million in work from the Northeast. So in the last six months, we lost half our annual income from the area.”
One of the bids was to APM Terminals, a private company with a factory in Elizabeth, N.J., but based in Amsterdam. Griggs lost out on a 4,000-ton steel-pipe order worth $6.2 million. A Canadian supplier got the contract — but it’s not known where the steel originated.
An email to APM Terminals wasn’t returned. A worker who answered the phone at the Elizabeth plant office declined to comment.
Another job, for 1,000 tons of pipe worth $1.1 million, was with the New York City Economic Development Corp., which hired a contractor to build piers for the planned Citywide Ferry Service.
An Economic Development Corp. spokesman confirmed the subcontractor used foreign steel for the pier pilings, but the spokesman couldn’t be more specific. Larger parts of the project in Brooklyn use American steel, the spokesman said.
U.S. industry intel said the steel was coming from the Netherlands — but where it was before that, nobody knew.
The Port Authority handled the last wanted.
At the massive LaGuardia Airport overhaul, Trinity bid $2 million to produce 1.6 tons of steel pipe — but lost to a Canadian company known to import Chinese coils and beams.
Trinity did get a piece of the LaGuardia action — providing 8,000 tons of pipe for roadways.
“But you still have to compete with the Chinese, even when you get a part of the project,” Griggs said.
The contractors hired to run the job play the foreign steel prices to their advantage, he said.
“They buy a little Chinese steel, a little Canadian, then they say, ‘Robert, the imports got you two projects Griggs