Congressional Steel Caucus's State of Steel hearing focuses on tariffs, unfair trade

Leading steelmakers, including Cleveland-Cliffs and Nucor, and the United Steelworkers union pressed for continued tariffs and other measures at the "State of Steel" hearing in Washington, D.C. this week.

The Congressional Steel Caucus held a hearing on Wednesday on the state of the American steel industry and the challenges the industry says it faces, including global steelmaking overcapacity and steel dumping at below-fair-market prices. The bipartisan group of House members plans to press the Trump administration to strengthen melt-and-pour standards to prevent the dumping foreign steel in the United States.

The Steel Caucus has been working to rein in what they describe as global overcapacity, including by testifying on their belief that Chinese cars pose a threat to American steelmakers, monitoring the Section 301 investigation on excess capacity, and lobbying for targeted countervailing tariffs on top of the Section 232 tariffs. It has also urged the administration to negotiate tougher anti-dumping measures during the upcoming renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

“Every year, this hearing yields important discussion about how Congress can engage to address the ongoing challenges of the domestic steel industry," said U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, the vice chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus. "And there is no better time to be having this conversation than right now in anticipation of the renegotiation of major labor contracts, new investments in facilities across the country, the reauthorization of federal surface transportation dollars, and the pending review of USMCA."

The steel industry remains Northwest Indiana's economic engine, Mrvan said. Thousands depend on steel industry jobs for income, healthcare and retirement.

“The hardworking men and women at the heart of this industry deserve fair wages, safe working conditions, and continued investment into the long-term health of legacy facilities that helped build this country," Mrvan said. "In Northwest Indiana, the steel industry directly employs about 13,000 workers, many of whom will be bargaining new contracts in the coming months. As the witnesses in front of me look towards those negotiations, it is vital that they find a solution that rewards American workers and maintains the health and strength of the industry."

Mrvan said the issue was personal to him since his grandfather was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia who worked as a steelworker in East Chicago for 53 years.

“It is particularly important that we continue to invest in the long-term future of facilities supported and run by organized labor," Mrvan said. "Northwest Indiana has long been the top steel-producing region in the nation, and the state as a whole is responsible for more than a quarter of the nation’s total steel output. Investments like the relining of the blast furnace at Gary Works and the reopening of the Gary Tin Mill are important investments to drive job growth in the short term. But we also need to ensure that the communities that built America continue to be central to the future of steelmaking. That means finding ways to keep legacy facilities economically competitive in the long-term and working toward more sustainable steel production across the board."

U.S. Steel consumption shrank from 116 million tons in 2018 to 102 million tons in 2024, an alarming drop of 12% in just a few years, Cleveland-Cliffs Executive Vice President for Government Relations Patrick Bloom said. Imports also seized about 25% of the market, putting a further squeeze on steelmakers, he said.

"The implementation of 50% across-the-board steel Section 232 tariffs without exclusions or country-specific exemptions, as well as the addition of Section 232 tariffs on steel derivative products, have delivered relief from global steel overcapacity penetrating the U.S. market in the form of dumped imports of steel and imports of steel-intensive goods," he said. "This relief was badly needed, and frankly, it was just in time."

Congress can take more acts to protect domestic steelmakers, such as requiring manifests for trucks and trains entering the country, establishing tougher domestic procurement provisions and supporting commercial shipbuilding, United Steelworkers International President Roxanne Brown said during her first testimony to the Congressional Steel Caucus.

"Maintaining our domestic steel industry is critical. Former USW International President Leo Gerard would regularly say that steel is the backbone of our economic and national security, and his statement is as true today as it was years ago. That is why USW remains supportive of the Section 232 steel tariffs, which stopped the bleeding of steel jobs from global excess capacity. However, we need to ensure our member companies also invest in our facilities to maintain a competitive edge," she said. "Our labor agreements help push investment, but the Steel Caucus can help too. We need to set policies that create certainty for the domestic steel industry, so that they don’t just maintain, but expand markets."