As steel industry layoffs grow in Valley, fight for fair trade must press on

Unfair trade, low oil PRICES and anemic global demand ganged up on the U.S. steel industry in 2015 to deliver a mean and powerful blow.

With recent news of yet another shutdown of steelmaking operations in the Mahoning Valley, that harsh beating looks unlikely to stop anytime soon.

As a Page 1 story in Saturday’s Vindicator reported, Warren Steel Holdings, a successor of the once mammoth Copperweld Steel Co., has temporarily shut down operations with hopes of reopening later in the first quarter of this year.

WSH thus becomes the latest casualty of adverse market conditions that have robbed the Valley economy of hundreds and hundreds of good-paying jobs over the past year in steel and related industries. The toll includes significant layoffs or closings at such enterprises as Vallourec Star, TMK-IPSCO, Wheatland Tube, Parker Hannifin and Exterran Inc.

That domino effect reminds us of the same chilling effect three decades ago when the Valley’s network of steelmaking giants fell into oblivion one dynamite blast at a time.

Now, as then, the inability to compete invited demise. Today, most industry and union leaders agree that current competitive struggles result largely from unfair trade practices, particularly by China and other Asian nations.

Also playing a large role has been the dramatic decline in demand for steel products brought on by the severely depressed oil and gas-drilling industry. As the cost of imported oil continues to tumble, the cost to extract shale oil exceeds the prices drillers can get for it. That means mayhem, too, for suppliers of steel pipe and other metals heavily used in hydraulic fracturing.

MAKING BAD SITUATION WORSE

As demand dries up, unfair trade practices make a bad situation worse for domestic steel producers.

As United Steelworkers of America International President Lee Gerard put it last month, “Multiple steel producing countries are taking more than one-third of our domestic market when American steelworkers should be sharing in an improved economy.”

Fortunately, steelworkers and their political and legislative allies refuse to play possum and accept the painful death of their livelihoods. Those groups deserve support in their battles on several fronts.

At the U.S. International Trade Commission, for example, rulings are due within the next month on slapping harsh duties on cut-rate hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel products from China entering the U.S. market. The commission has in recent years established a record of solidarity with U.S. producers and of punishment for unfair trade partners. The ITC should stay firmly footed on that course.

In another arena, look for long drawn-out debates over ratification of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement this year in the halls of Congress and on the presidential campaign trail. Many expect it will be an uphill effort that likely will drag on well into 2017.

Agreement on the TPP, a trade pact among 12 Pacific Rim and North American countries on a variety of trade and economic policies, was reached last October after seven years of secret negotiations.

Because of the lack of transparency in those negotiations and the potential ill effects the TPP could create, we continue to urge a slow and cautious road to ratification or rejection.

As U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, a leading critic of TPP, argues, “This broad and overarching 12-country deal makes up 40 percent of the world’s GDP and gives corporations wide-ranging powers to challenge federal law. Free trade without fair trade threatens manufacturing, innovation and inevitably leads to hundreds of thousands of American jobs being shipped overseas.”

Many will recall that the North American Free Trade Agreement raced through Congress on the fast track on the promise of creating 200,000 American jobs. In a 17-year retrospective on the treaty, the Economic Policy Institute estimated last year that it robbed the U.S. economy of about 700,000 jobs.

In sum, the fight for fair trade with our global allies will neither be quick nor easy to attain. But considering that the future of thousands and thousands of U.S. workers hangs in the balance, it is a fight the U.S. must engage in aggressively throughout 2016 and beyond.