Bipartisan group of 13
senators urges the Commerce Department to reconsider quotas on steel conduit.
More than a dozen United States
Senators have co-signed a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce requesting
action on what they call an “unsustainable surge of Mexican steel imports.”
In
particular, the letter points to to steel conduit imports as having reached a
level that has contributed to the closing of a steel conduit production
facility in the U.S. The 13 senators, from states including Arkansas, Ohio and
Pennsylvania, urge Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade
Representative Katherine Tai to “act now to avoid further damage.”
The
letter refers to earlier Section 232 duties on such shipments having been
lifted in 2019, in the runup to the ratification of
the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
The
co-authors say the volume of Mexican iron and steel products into the U.S. has
increased “approximately 73 percent” compared with a 2017 baseline figure. To
combat that circumstance, they suggest both “quotas, if necessary” and “the
reapplication of Section 232 tariffs.”
In
its roundup of January 2023 steel import figures, the Washington-based American
Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) says imports of finished steel increased by
more than 18 percent compared with the prior month. This happened at the same
time steel output figures in the U.S. were stable or rising by about 1 percent.
In
January, according to AISI, Mexico was the second largest supplier (behind
Canada) of finished and semi-finished steel to the U.S. The 456,000 tons of
steel it shipped to the U.S. was up by 10 percent from the prior month’s
shipments.
The request comes
on the heels of the U.S. government imposing a 200 percent tariff on imports of
Russian aluminum. That import duty may carry greater geopolitical versus market
heft. According to U.S. Department of Commerce figures, the volume of Russian
aluminum entering the U.S. has already declined from about 770,000 metric tons
in 2017 to less than 210,000 metric tons last year.