Dive Brief:
- Cleveland-Cliffs will shutter its tinplate production plant in Weirton, West Virginia, in April, laying off approximately 900 workers, according to a company press release.
- The Ohio-based steelmaking company claimed that it was forced to close its facility due to the International Trade Commission’s recent decision not to implement anti-dumping and countervailing duties on tin mill products from Canada, China, Germany and South Korea.
- “In what was our final effort to maintain tinplate production here in America, we proved that we are forced to operate on an uneven playing field, and that the deck was stacked in favor of the importers,” Cleveland-Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves said in a Feb. 15 statement.
Dive Insight:
The plant’s closing stems from a Cleveland-Cliffs petition last year regarding imports of tin products.
In January 2023, Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Steelworkers filed antidumping and countervailing duty petitions against eight countries, citing unfairly traded tin and chromium coated sheet steel products.
The petitions were on U.S. imports of tin mill products from Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom, as well as countervailing duties of tin mill products from China.
“The United States is still the largest importer of steel in the world, despite being the most environmentally friendly steel producing nation,” Goncalves said in a statement announcing the petition. “As our filing shows, there has been a significant surge in unfairly priced tinplate imports flooding the United States over the past two years, and we cannot let this persist.”
The steelmaker added in its petition that U.S. Census data showed that from 2019 to 2021, imports of tin mill products from the subject countries increased by 21%. Imports also increased by an additional 21% through November 2022.
After finding evidence of dumping and subsidization, on Jan. 5 the Department of Commerce announced duties on four countries: Canada, China, Germany and South Korea. However, on Feb. 6, the ITC unanimously rejected these tariffs.
Cleveland-Cliffs produces tin mill products at its Weirton facility and sells about 300,000 net tons per year, approximately 2% of the company’s total steel sales volume. The Weirton facility employs about 950 people, the majority of whom are USW-represented, according to the January 2023 press release.
The impacted employees will be provided relocation opportunities to work at other Cleveland-Cliffs facilities or receive severance packages, the company stated last week. A WARN notice was sent out on Feb. 15 to the employees.
Goncalves added that the Weirton facility recently ran a successful test of its drawn and iron material production with “zero defects,” a sign that the company could meet the market’s needs with its domestic capacity, the CEO claimed.
“To the tin can makers and consumer groups who irrationally fought against American jobs and a domestic-based food supply chain, this outcome is due to your own greed,” Goncalves said.
Groups such as the Consumer Brands Association disagree with Cleveland-Cliffs and have spoken out against such tariffs, saying that can manufacturers rely on imported material and that duties would raise prices on canned food and other goods for American consumers. They say U.S. steel manufacturers have the capacity to meet about half of domestic can manufacturing demand.
Additionally, the duty levels put forth by the Commerce Department that apply to the four countries are largely at levels lower than what Cleveland-Cliffs and USW called for.
The proposed tariffs, which reached up to 300% on some countries, were well above the originally alleged dumping margins average of 132%, a bipartisan coalition of 27 members of Congress wrote in a letter urging against the tariffs.
West Virginia is immediately implementing an economic development task force to identify and attract potential businesses for taking over the Weirton facility, as well as a workforce quick response team to help with job training and relocation assistance.
Despite the news, Cleveland-Cliffs is maintaining its 2024 sales volume guidance of 16.5 million tons of overall steel products.
