U.S. Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs CEO credited tariffs with shrinking the import market share from 25% to 30% to 16%, bolstering domestic steel production and investment in Northwest Indiana steel mills.
U.S. Steel CEO David Burritt, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves and United Steelworkers District 7 Director Mike Millsap touted tariffs of 50% as restoring American steelmaking at the Congressional Steel Caucus's State of Steel Hearing in Washington D.C. Wednesday. But they called for more trade protections as global steelmaking capacity continued to climb.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated that excess steelmaking capacity will increase to 721 million tons by 2027, while the United States made about 83 million tons of steel last year, Millsap said.
"Excess capacity pushes global prices down, and in turn makes it harder to invest and maintain U.S. production," he said. "The Section 232 tariffs on steel continue to be effective in pushing back the flood of excess capacity, but we need to push for longer term commitments from our trading partners to limit excess capacity."
Millsap called for negotiating stronger rules of origin policies in steel to include all heavy products traded with the United States to "build a Fortress America" and prevent the U.S. market from being a dumping ground for subsidized foreign steel. He called for restoring shipbuilding, increasing Buy America policies, ensuring U.S. agencies are not buying foreign steel and replacing Chinese-made steel with U.S.-made steel.
Goncalves said Cleveland-Cliffs was forced to shutter plants due to globalization and dumped steel from countries with weaker labor laws, government subsidies, currency manipulation and more lax environmental standards, including China, Brazil, Mexico and Vietnam
He said increasing the tariffs from 25% to 50% has helped and not driven up prices on items like cars and appliances as critics feared.
"After almost one year of steel tariffs in place, no sector can honestly claim that the sales prices of their products to consumers increased because of the price they pay for steel," he said. "Artificially cheap steel dumped in our market destroys American jobs and poisons our society. It is a National Security imperative to value domestic supply chains and to quit using steel that is not melted and poured in the United States."
Burritt said tariffs work, protecting jobs, preserving steelmaking capacity and supporting renewed investment in American manufacturing. Parent company Nippon Steel is investing $14 billion in U.S. Steel's operations, including $3.1 billion in Gary Works.
"Gary Works is rising again, with a major blast furnace reline and upgrades that strengthen one of the backbones of American manufacturing," he said.
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