US Steel To Reopen Idle Plant Thanks To Trump Tariffs
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 03/08/2018
U.S. Steel will reopen an idle plant in Illinois in anticipation of increased domestic demand following President Trump’s announced 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs. The steelmaker will be calling 500 employees back to work to the plant – which was set on idle status two years ago as a flood of cheap imported metals have pushed down domestic steel prices.
“We’re really excited to be able to tell our employees in the community in Granite City, Illinois, that we will be calling back 500 employees,” said CEO David Burritt in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Two blast furnaces will be fired back up at the Granite City Works integrated steelmaking plant in Illinois – a process which could take up to four months, and will add approximately 1.4 million tons of steel annually to the U.S. market – generating up to $85 million in pretax income in 2018 for the company. The restarted furnace will require inventories of iron ore, metallurgical coking coal and other ingredients to operate. The site also has another idle blast furnace which could be restarted later.
The facility had been idle since December 2015 over what Burritt called unfair trade practices. “If you don’t have customers here to sell to and you can’t make money, you have to shut them down.”
Steel producers have been hurt in recent years by increasing competition from foreign competitors, particularly China, that have ramped up production at lower prices.
Prices have been rising again in the U.S. in part because of the Trump administration’s discussions over whether to widen tariffs that have been applied piecemeal in recent years. Spot-market sheet-steel prices have risen more about 37% since October to about $810 a ton, according steel-industry price surveys. -WSJ
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