CLEVELAND — The battle to keep and grow American steel jobs is an ongoing one as the industry fights against an increase in what Ohio's two U.S. senators call a surge in unfair Mexican steel imports.
Data from 2022 shows that iron and steel imports from Mexico increased by more than 70%, semi-finished steel by 120% and conduit imports by nearly 600%. Republicans, Democrats and the United Steelworkers Union say it is steel coming into the U.S. in violation of a 2019 trade agreement with Mexico.
United Steelworkers Union International President David McCall was in Cleveland Wednesday, meeting with Sen. Sherrod Brown and Cleveland Cliffs President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves to call on the Biden Administration to take action. Brown says the flow of steel from Mexico plays a role in job losses.
"Republic Steel unforunately announced plans to close it's Canton, Ohio and Lackawanna, New York plants last December; 500 workers are losing good paying union jobs," Brown said. "Since last year we've sounded the alarm on this, we've called on the administration on this but the unfair imports keep flooding into our country."
United in this call for action are McCall and Goncalves. The two are also united in the ongoing opposition to the planned sale of US Steel to Japanese-based Nippon. McCall said it violates their collective bargaining agreement and is a threat to national security that President Biden told the union in April he would block.
"The president's been on record as saying that he believes US Steel should remain an American owned company and operated by American workers; we completely agree with that," said McCall. "So, we're opposed to the deal first of all because it violates our collective bargaining agreement but just as many concerns around critical infrastructure and national defense that's being reviewed by the CIFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.) in D.C. now, we'll eventually put a report on the president's desk.
"We suspect that once that report gets put on his desk, he will reject it. We also have arbitration scheduled on our collective bargaining agreement in a couple of months, so the Board of Arbitration for US Steel will either reject the deal or CIFIUS will or they both will."
Beyond that, Goncalves, who started this whole process last year with an unsolicited bid for US Steel, tells News 5 that former President Trump called him and made the same pledge if he's elected to also block the deal.
"There are only two guys with a chance to be President of the United States and they are both against. That's a bad start for the deal," Goncalves said. "In my opinion there's total assurance that Nippon Steel is not going to own US Steel."
The US Steel Board approved the Nippon deal and has been moving forward with the merger plans. Nippon has vowed to protect union jobs in the U.S., but McCall said Wednesday he isn't buying it.
"Nippon and US Steel are out on a big PR campaign about how they're going to guarantee no layoffs and they'll back up the contract, and they'll be no plant shutdowns," McCall said. "All of us who have worked in the steel industry know that to say that is one thing but then the caveat they put in their proposed agreements is, unless there's a change in our business plan. So they're meaningless."
