Local lawmakers tout new law to combat imported steel dumping

Two congressmen who helped push to outlaw illegal foreign steel imports toured two metro-east steel mills Tuesday to view the jobs and industries their votes were protecting.

U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, and U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville., visited Alton Steel and U.S. Steel-Granite City Works. The two supported the bill President Barack Obama signed Monday calling for more oversight to halt the flood of cheap foreign steel imports that has hurt the domestic steel market.

The harm to the domestic market was so great that U.S. Steel had initially announced in March its plans to lay off all 2,080 employees at the Granite City steel mill and shut down the plant. Bost and Davis recently introduced the Trade Enforcement Effectiveness Act to improve the ability of domestic manufacturers to fight foreign illegal trade practices. Last month, the Pittsburgh-based steel company announced that the mill would remain open and only 80 would lose their jobs.

“We identified a problem,” Bost said. “And in working with Rodney and many others with the members of the steel caucus, we were able to move some language specifically to the president that was signed yesterday. And our hope is and we believe that with those changes this will stop this from happening in the future.”

Bost, a former firefighter, compares the new law to a better system of preventing house fires. Until recently, the trade laws did not identify a problem until it was too late.

“You couldn’t call the fire department until the house was on the ground after burning,” Bost said. “Now, we can see what is going on and when rooms start to burn, we can call the fire department. Roughly, what happens is that it allows a quicker reaction time when damages are occurring from illegal dumping. Quite often what would happen is that a plant would have to shut down so that they could then argue and say they had damages.”

Davis said the flood of cheap foreign steel is not a new problem, but is one that had proliferated to the point of losing a major metro-east employer.

“Mike Bost led the charge in making sure that there’s some anti-dumping language in this trade package that the president just signed that can really positively impact the 2,000-plus families that rely on Granite City steel,” Davis said.

Congress had not updated the trade laws in more than 20 years, according to American Iron and Steel Institute president and chief executive officer Thomas Gibson.

“The surge in foreign steel imports continues at record high levels, leaving us with a great deal more work to do to mitigate the job loss and negative impact on our industry,” Gibson said.

U.S. Steel vice president of service center solutions Geoff Turk said the new law is a breakthrough for the steel industry and provides a better way to monitor and react to foreign steel imports entering the market.

“We needed a level playing field to compete on,” Turk said. “This language gives us the chance to really react a lot sooner.”

“When we are competing in a worldwide market, we need to make sure that we are in a situation that we can actually compete,” Bost said. “We can’t allow the opportunity for maneuvers by other nations in their markets to negatively impact our market and our ability to keep our workers working.”

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 9:55 AM with the headline "Local lawmakers tout new law to combat imported steel dumping."