Leibowitz: Steel Product Exclusion Process is Stuck

Lewis Leibowitz, trade attorney and contributor to Steel Market Update, offers the following commentary on the latest developments in Washington:

The steel product exclusion process is stuck. While more than 11,000 comments have been filed, the overwhelming majority of which are product exclusion requests, less than 100 (by my latest count) have been processed. Of the 56 requests that have been DENIED, none of them reached the merits of the request. Rather, the Commerce Department rejected them because there was insufficient information presented. None of the requests I saw went into any detail about the nature of the deficiencies. The 42 requests that were granted involved very small tonnages; the largest single approval that I saw was for 100 metric tons. As readers will know, steel imports used by American manufacturers total about 30 million tons.