Posted on 12/15/2006 10:54:16 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
U.S. trade panel ends steel tariff Carmakers say move will cut costs
By James P. Miller Tribune staff reporter Published December 15, 2006
In a move that cheered automakers but angered domestic steel producers, the U.S. International Trade Commission on Thursday eliminated most of its controversial tariffs on carbon-steel imports.
The ITC's ruling brings an end to what has been an unusual, high-profile feud between two American smokestack industries battered and dramatically altered by global competition: Big Steel and its crucial customer, the auto industry.
The commission's action will lower the price auto companies pay for steel, and bring a similar benefit to other major steel buyers, such as Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co.
Those same lower steel prices promise to pressure profits at many American steel producers, however. Shares of U.S. Steel Corp. and other steelmakers declined moderately after the commission's late-morning decision was made public.
The duties the ITC voted to remove "are outdated and hurt American manufacturing competitiveness and U.S. jobs," a Ford Motor Co. trade official said. The import restrictions, he added, have been "needlessly helping a steel industry that is now profitable and healthy."
But the domestic steel industry maintains that the tariffs are needed to prevent the kind of low-priced, sell-at-any-cost import practices that helped bring the industry to its knees during the 1980s and 1990s....
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
FINALLY!
In sports news, The Pittsburg Steelers will now be known as the Shanghai Steelers.......
Both domestic steel production and domestic heavy industry are critical resources we need in the interest of national security.
However working in a steel mill is tough, and relatively dangerous work. American workers aren't willing to do such work as cheaply as those in other countries, and I can hardly blame them.
Well as they say if you can't go to the third-world, bring the third-world to you. That's what all 12 million of the illegal aliens are here for. A permanent, poor, underclass that we can oppress and exploit, except their birth-rates are 5 times that of us indigenous people so give it a generation or two and we'll find ourselves the minority and the place will revert to the best to be found in Mexico. Murder in the streets, corruption everywhere, drugs, cartels, etc., coming to you soon on your local street corner.
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