STEEL INDUSTRY Duferco opposes quotas on slabs

No one is producing enough slabs in this country to meet the demand, the company said.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
FARRELL, Pa.-- Duferco Farrell Corp. doesn't want President Bush to impose any restrictions on the importing of steel slabs.
The U.S. International Trade Commission has come up with recommendations to impose tariffs and other controls on imported steel, seeking to protect the domestic steel market from unfairly subsidized or traded foreign products.
The recommendations, announced Friday, will be sent to the president Dec. 19, and he will have until mid-February to accept, reject or alter the suggestions.
"Without slab imports, Duferco Farrell would not exist and we would not have been able to create 500 jobs in the Shenango Valley," said Bob Miller, company treasurer.
Duferco doesn't make its own steel but imports slabs for its manufacturing of a variety of products ranging from hot-rolled to specialty cold-rolled strip steel in either high or low carbon and alloys.
Disappointed: Miller said the company is disappointed that the commission recommended imposition of import restrictions (quotas and tariffs) on slabs.
Those restrictions won't help the recovery of the domestic flat products steel industry because slab sales represents only one half of 1 percent of the industry's sales revenue, Miller said.
No domestic steel mill is in business to sell slabs, he said.
Duferco officials said the trade commission found that domestic producers use more than 99 percent of the slabs they produce and that the domestic demand for slabs needed to produce hot-rolled sheet and plate steel exceeds the domestic production level by 14 million tons a year.
That means the flat products industry, including Duferco, must import slabs.
Geneva Steel, the only domestic mill that has supplied at least some slabs to the U.S. market on a somewhat regular basis, announced a temporary shutdown Nov. 17, causing more of a shortage of domestic slabs, he said.
"We will strongly urge the president not to impose any restrictions on slabs imports," he said.
Recommendations: Each of the six members of the trade commission presented their own set of recommendations but the majority favored additional tariffs for imported flat-rolled products as well as a quota and tariff system for semi-finished imported slabs.
Miller said Duferco was pleased that the majority of the commission members treated slabs separately from flat-rolled imports because slabs are an intermediate raw material that can only be used by steel mills.