Raimondo Underscores Administration's Intention to Protect American Steel from Cheap Imports

American Iron and Steel Institute CEO Kevin Dempsey thanked Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for continuing to enforce 25% tariffs on imported steel from most countries, authorized under the Section 232 national security rationale.

Allies such as the EU and Canada were infuriated that their steel was classified as a national security threat, and Canada got out from under them, but European steel is still subject to tariff rate quotas. Although Raimondo praised Biden's work to rebuild ally relationships, she also strongly defended the need for the tariffs.

"This country is stronger when we make things in America," she said at the AISI conference May 16. "Don’t get me wrong. We need trade. I’m not saying we should produce everything we consume, in no way am I saying that," she said. "What I am saying is that when you buy 100% of your semiconductor chips in Taiwan, or you don't have a vibrant domestic steel industry, that is a problem for national security."

Dempsey said that overcapacity in steel production is a global problem, not just a Chinese problem, and he told Raimondo that it's getting worse again, and asked what could be done.

Raimondo pointed to Commerce Department efforts to enforce antidumping and countervailing duty laws and to identify circumvention and evasion. She noted she'd be testifying later that day on the Hill about the department's budget needs. "We need every bit of enforcement capacity that we have," she said, and she warned that if the House Republicans' discretionary spending caps became law, hundreds of employees of the International Trade Administration would lose their jobs -- analysts, factfinders and lawyers.

"It would slow down [AD/CVD investigations] massively," she said. "We know time matters." She urged the conference attendees to let Congress know they don't want the budget cut.

Raimondo also said the global arrangement on steel and aluminum will be "a game changer," and will disadvantage China because that country doesn't produce green steel. "So we're extremely focused on that," she said.

China is "flooding the market with cheap steel and aluminum and other products. Stealing our technology. And we're very serious about protecting [our economy]," she said. "We use our export controls to deny China our technology, and we'll use our tariffs and antidumping/countervailing duties aggressively."

Dempsey noted that China is subsidizing its firms to expand in stainless steel in Indonesia, and he said he knows the Commerce Department has proposed regulations that would consider extra-territorial subsidies in CVD.

"The nature of the threat is changing so we need to change," she replied.

She noted that this year, the Commerce Department has 34 new trade remedy investigations on steel products, covering nearly a billion dollars in imports.

"So AD/CVD, the majority of the work we're doing relates to the steel industry. That's a good thing because we're sticking up for you," she said.