The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) has submitted comments to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) reaffirming the steel industry’s concerns regarding the violations and abuses of trade agreements. AISI’s letter was in response to the USTR’s request for public comments. The link to the full comments can be found here.

Kevin Dempsey, AISI Senior Vice President for Public Policy, wrote, “While the steel industry in the United States has seen some benefits from free trade agreements – most notably from NAFTA – the biggest trade-related challenges the industry faces are with countries with which the U.S. does not have a free trade agreement. China, in particular, continues to subsidize and implement other market distorting policies and practices that have fueled the massive and growing global excess capacity in steel.”

Dempsey noted that governments in other countries have followed the Chinese model and also implement interventionist policies to benefit their domestic industries at the expense of U.S. steelmakers.

“These market-distorting foreign government trade policies continue to put pressure on global steel markets and have led to surges in foreign steel imports. This has contributed to thousands of lost American jobs in the steel industry and in the communities the steel industry supports. AISI calls on the Administration to focus on ways to address these important trade policy challenges,“ he concluded