Zekelman: ‘We Need to Protect Our Jobs from Unfair Trade’

Editor’s note: Following is a response from Zekelman Industries CEO Barry Zekelman to remarks by Daniel Pearson of the Cato Institute published in Steel Market Update’s Sept. 5 newsletter. Zekelman comments on his position on imports and the current state of steel-related trade into the U.S.

During our exchange at the recent SMU Steel Summit Conference, Dan responded that he was surprised I advocated for “much of the same” when it comes to dealing with dumped steel and steel products. Nothing could be further from the truth! My suggestions were to change the system to better capture countries, products and schemes that are used to circumvent duties, and speed up the process, initiate these measures on the imposition of threat, broaden the product scope and definition of injury. Quotas should be imposed at the immediate sign of threat to injure (which China and many countries do) based on price erosion, job losses, volume reductions and plant closures. Duties are very difficult to enforce due to the lack of resources to collect them, mislabeling products to avoid duties, changing documentation to avoid disclosing the actual producing country, and just not paying the duties. All these cheating schemes harm the entire country that receives the unfairly sold product.