Foreign Steel Dumping Targeted By Marcy Kaptur

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Representative Marcy Kaptur has made the illegal dumping of steel one of her main targets over the last few years. The steel industry in places like Lorain have been devastated by increasing numbers of steel imports and steel dumping, both of which Kaptur railed against during testimony in front of the U.S. Department of Commerce on Thursday.

On March 11, 2017, a portion of the US Steel's Lorain tubular operations plant was permanently shut down. Many workers at the plant were left in a murky grey area with their jobs. Kaptur and other Ohio politicians asked several federal politicians to intervene, including President Donald Trump.

While Camaco LLC's April announcement that it would add some 200 jobs to its Lorain firm, helps offset some losses, Lorain has still lost more than 1,000 steel-related jobs since 2015. Nationwide, there were 14,000 steelworkers laid off between Jan. 2015 and Dec. 2016.

“Lorain is a town that once employed 12,000 hard working men and women in the steel industry," Kaptur said during her testimony. "Despite millions of dollars invested in Lorain steel modernization by the industry with wage, health, and pension benefit sacrifices by workers, hundreds more of the remaining steel jobs have been disappearing in the last two years."

In a letter sent to the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, in late March, Kaptur and other congresspeople cite illegal steel practices by China and other nations as key in the decline of America and Lorain's steel economy.

“According to a 2016 report from Duke University, China alone produces 2300 million metric tons of steel, despite the fact only 1500 million metric tons are necessary to meet global demand. Are the rest of the world steel producing nations to be buried under heaps of Chinese dumped steel by an economy that is state-run? The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said in 2015 that China’s capacity alone exceeded the combined capacity of the U.S., the EU, Japan, and Russia," she railed. "Additionally, tubular steel imports, the same type of steel made in Lorain, rose by 86 percent from 2016 to 2017. So there seems to be demand."

The U.S. Department of Commerce said it will complete an investigation into possible steel dumping by June.

You can watch Kaptur's remarks in the video below.

Photo from YouTube Screenshot