Sen. Casey Fights for Pennsylvania manufacturers, national security in infrastructure bill

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) joined U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) in filing an amendment to the infrastructure bill that would strengthen trade protections for U.S. steelworkers.

The amendment would address loopholes Russian and Chinese steel manufacturers are using to circumvent U.S. trade laws concerning grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES). According to the Senators, Russian and Chinese steel manufacturers are shifting their typical steel production to GOES and moving those products through Canada and Mexico to get around U.S. steel tariffs.

Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest producer of flat-rolled steel in North American and the only producer of GOES in North America, employs thousands in Ohio and Pennsylvania. With U.S. jobs at risk, as well as national security, Casey, Brown, and Cassidy said the amendment was needed to protect and prioritize U.S. production should the United States be forced to buy foreign GOES products for its electrical grid.

“For years, Senator Brown and I have fought to protect AK Steel, America’s last electrical steel manufacturer, from trade cheating,” Casey said. “When countries cheat on trade, Pennsylvanians lose their jobs, but when trade cheating impacts critical infrastructure, like our electrical grid, it also becomes a matter of urgent national security. This bipartisan amendment will prevent countries like China and Russia from circumventing our trade laws and ensure we are not reliant on foreign adversaries to supply our electrical grid.”

The amendment would direct the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to enter into negotiations with Canada and Mexico to ensure that the national security of American is not imparted by the importation of GOES core parts, laminations, and cores for use in our electric grid transformers and that Canada and Mexico are not being used as tariff circumvention staging grounds.

Additionally, the amendment would require USTR to submit reports to Congress every 90 days until Mexico and Canada agree to measure that will prevent the GOES core parts importation.

“Domestic production of electrical steels is critical to the modernization and greening of America’s electric grid and to the electrification of the American vehicle fleet,” said Lourenco Goncalves, chairman, president and CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. “However, unfair trade practices have infected the domestic electrical steel market, first through the prevalence of dumped and subsidized imports of Grain Oriented Electrical Steel (GOES), and more recently through the circumvention of the steel tariffs involving the importation of electrical steel laminations and cores produced in Mexico and Canada from GOES produced overseas. As Congress prepares to invest billions of dollars to upgrade America’s electric power infrastructure, it is imperative that this circumvention activity be addressed in order to preserve not only our ability to continue to produce electrical steels in the United States but also to preserve and grow the significant number of good-paying middle-class union jobs associated to the production of GOES by Americans, for our own benefit in the United States.”