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“The American steel industry has faced repeated surges of unfairly traded steel imports in recent years – due largely to dumped and subsidized imports from many countries and regions, including those that produce steel with higher carbon intensity than US steelmakers,” Kevin Dempsey, president and chief executive officer of the American Institute of Steel and Iron (AISI), said on Wednesday.
The attendees – including representatives from Cleveland-Cliffs, Nucor, Steel Dynamics Inc, the United Steelworkers union (USW), North American Stainless and the Committee on Pipe and Tube Imports (CPTI) – applauded the introduction of the Leveling the Playing Field 2.0 Act (LTPF 2.0).
“Congress must take action to update our trade laws to address these and other trade-distorting practices,” AISI said in a press release, urging members of Congress to cosponsor the LTPF 2.0, which currently has 82 cosponsors in both the Senate and the House.
The LTPF 2.0 was introduced in June 2023 by US Representatives Terri Sewell (Democrat, Alabama) and Beth Van Duyne (Republican, Texas) and US Senators Sherrod Brown (Democrat, Ohio) and Todd Young (Republican, Indiana), to curb unfair trade practices by making various changes to US anti-dumping and countervailing duty law.
The members of Congress spoke in a press conference on Wednesday, reinforcing the need to tackle unfair trade practices negatively impacting the steel industry.
“We continue to face several challenges, including anti-market dumping from China. By modernizing our trade laws, we can finally combat China’s Belt and Road Initiative and their subsidization of factories that are designed to dodge our current US trade laws. It is for this reason that I introduced the Leveling the Playing Field 2.0 legislation,” Sewell said on Wednesday.
Van Duyne zeroed in on “bad actor” China, saying that the country is “blatantly violating trade agreements and finding loopholes to avoid being held accountable.”
She continued: “American manufacturers are at a disadvantage because competitors like China are engaging in anti-free market practices. We’ve seen American steel producers get hurt by China’s unfair practices.”
At the press conference, Representative Frank Mrvan (Democrat, Indiana), who serves as the Vice Chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus, highlighted that the flood of unfairly traded steel imports challenges the steel industry.
“Predatory pricing, state subsidies and other unfair trade practices have distorted global markets, allowing countries such as China to dump cheap steel in the US markets, undercutting the domestic procedures, threatening our very existence in steel industry,” Mrvan said.
The LTPF 2.0 bill establishes a process for successive anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations and establishes a timeline for the Department of Commerce to issue determinations in successive investigations.
“This legislation provides tools which will ensure the [US steel pipe and tube] industry can continue to compete in a world market plagued by steel overcapacity and distortions caused by Chinese government ownership of their steel industry,” Roger B. Schagrin, executive director and general counsel of CPTI, said.
Schagrin added: “We…urge Congress to act this year to ensure that the pipe and tube industry and its workers can play a vital role in the US economy and support our national security.”
USW president David McCall echoed support of the LTPF 2.0: “This bill would strengthen our nation’s ability to counteract foreign subsidies and combat the dumping of unfairly priced goods into our markets from bad actors like China.”