Steel Industry Gets Big Win

It’s been a big week for the steel industry. In all actuality, it’s been a big couple of months. In July, a decision handed down by the U.S. Department of Commerce made it difficult for companies from nine different foreign countries to import steel into the United States. Those companies were “dumping” steel into the U.S. market for less than market value.

The World Trade Organization defines dumping as “a situation of international price discrimination, where the price of a product when sold in the importing country is less than the price of the product in the market of the exporting country.”

This led the International Trade Commission to investigate the problem. Just last week, the USITC released their findings, ruling in favor of the U.S. Steel industry. The commission, in its unanimous 6-0 decision, found that Mexico’s steel manufacturers were in fact dumping steel into the U.S. market, and exports from Turkey were subsidized from the Turkish market. This lead to the U.S. Department of Commerce placing a duty order on imports of steel rebar from Mexico, and a countervailing duty on steel rebar from Turkey as well.

We caught these countries in the act, and now they are forced to pay up. And they should too. When international companies dump steel into the U.S. market, it hurts our economy. It’s a full-scale assault on American jobs and American families. It tarnishes the domestic industry as a whole and hurts consumers.

This recent decision is a big win for the American steel business, and is a good thing for everyone, especially manufacturers with domestic plant overhead costs like Nucor Steel, Olympia Steel Buildings, and Rigid Global Buildings. Armstrong Steel Buildings is thrilled to see our government step up and protect American businesses. As a leader in pre-engineered steel buildings, we occupy an important place in the market as a steel manufacturer as well.

That doesn’t mean we are immune to this unfair economic practice. When the steel industry hurts, we hurt. We depend on our detailers, engineers and fabrication partners to ensure your building winds up being exactly what you want, down to every last detail. We control the design and engineering process rather than cutting corners and focusing on volume. We have the flexibility to ship from locations across the country. While a foreign dump of steel into the market has the potential to severely injure a manufacturer, we aren’t stuck with one fabricator. Armstrong Steel’s buying power and flexibility enables us to schedule projects based on the customer’s location, timeframe and specific needs.

A big victory for the American Steel industry means a big victory for us, and for you. This ruling helps level the playing field. Although steel prices around the world tend to trend upward, this verdict will help keep prices from wildly fluctuating and keep our jobs at home secure. For our money, we’ll continue to bet on American employees and American ingenuity.

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