Electrical Steel Company Says Section 232 Action Coming
The only producer of electrical steel in the U.S., which employs thousands of workers in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, thanked Donald Trump for imposing a Section 232 remedy on laminations and cores that are used to make electric transformers. A press release about its statement, which came out the day before Election Day, did not say whether a tariff or quota would be imposed.
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Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves was quoted in the release as saying, “Furthermore, I am pleased that the Department of Commerce will take action to re-evaluate recently-granted [grain oriented electrical steel (GOES)] Section 232 product exclusions.” He said Korean exports of 40,000 tons of electrical steel were granted an exclusion, and said that the U.S. market only consumes 1,400 tons of electrical steel in the dimension covered by the exclusion. The release described GOES as the product “used in the production of electric transformers that support the power grid and equipment required by the U.S. military.”
The Commerce Department has not announced a result of the investigation, which began in May, and there has been no executive order imposing a tariff or quota. The company thanked members of the Ohio and Pennsylvania delegations of both parties who have pushed for the protection, and none of them announced an action on their websites.
The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Electrical steel is protected by the original Section 232 tariffs, but the company said that after that tariff, there was an increase in imports of the laminations and cores made with that kind of steel.