Posted on 10/13/2007 12:13:41 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
Government Grants Steel Makers' Request to Extend Tariffs to China, India, Four Other Nations
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a victory for U.S. steel makers, the federal government agreed Wednesday to continue tariffs on imports of certain steel products from China, India and four other nations.
General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. Chrysler and other steel consumers had opposed the tariff extension. But ending the tariffs would have increased steel imports, harming U.S. steel makers, said Alan Price, a lawyer for Charlotte, N.C.-based Nucor Corp.
"China has a staggering amount of excess (steel production) capacity," he said.
The U.S. International Trade Commission extended the tariffs on so-called hot-rolled steel from Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine, in addition to China and India but eliminated them for Argentina, Kazakhstan, Romania and South Africa.
About 60 million tons of hot-rolled steel, used to make autos, household appliances and many other goods, is consumed annually in the U.S., Price said.
Tariffs were first imposed in 2001 and vary depending on the country, but are as high as 90 percent for China. The duties were imposed to counteract what the U.S. and other nations call unfair trade practices, such as dumping or selling a product below production costs.
William Gaskin, president of the Precision Metalforming Association, a group of smaller manufacturers, called the decision "a tough blow for American steel consumers."
The ITC "missed the fact that American companies need steel products at globally competitive prices" and that the U.S. steel industry is competitive, profitable and no longer needs government protection from cheap production overseas, he said.
Under World Trade Organization rules, the U.S. must review the tariffs every five years.
Shares of Nucor rose 20 cents to $58.50 in after-hours trading, after falling 47 cents to close at $58.30 in the regular trading session Wednesday.
I don’t want any lead in my steel anyway.
LOL—My dog won’t eat Chinese steel.
Translation:
The American steel companies and their unions want to protect a few thousand jobs at the expense of millions of consumers by forcing consumers to pay higher prices for produces using steel than would otherwise prevail. This protectionism has gone on in the steel industry since the post WWII era and has cost you and me thousands of dollars over the years. Truth is, our companies can't compete. One reason: China and Japan's steel industries were bombed into the Stone Age in WWII, but rebuilt with modern technology. The US is using plants that were built in the 1800's and can't compete.
End the union and companies free ride...get rid of import quotas and taxes.
Good.
Good news.
Good news that we’ll have to pay more for steel?
Actually it has gone on since Lincoln. Protectionism was one of the founding principles of the Republican party. The Union-Pacific railroad cost two thousand 1870’s dollars per mile more than it would have if there had been no tariff.
Good news is that we won’t have to pay less for garbage.
The Union-Pacific railroad cost two thousand 1870’s dollars per mile more than it would have if there had been no tariff.And yet we and the Union-Pacific railroad survived.
Did anyone in the Bush Administration ever take Econ 101 while in college? Apparently not.
I got a chuckle out of the headline. I’ll bet 90% of them didn’t even know the Bush steel tariffs were still in effect.
Bad news. That means my company will have to make frames in Canada rather than here, then ship them back here to be finished, because we can’t buy cheap steel rolls here. That means the company will cut sheet metal worker jobs.
Still say good?
No, a lot of Bushes tariffs were dropped, and some reduced a few years back.
So, American companies make garbage? Because it’s make from steel rolled in China?
Chinese steel has been known to be garbage for a long time.
Nicely put;
SOMEone's been studying economics, I can tell!
These steel tariffs are opposed by the auto companies, who nonetheless happily endorse auto tariffs, without ever seeing the irony there.
I look at it as good news that if we ever have to go into a real war we will have some sort of core copetency to build an industry vital to war (steel-making) off of.
I don't think that's the issue. The issue is that the gov't gets more money for doing nothing other than to raise the prices of things we purchase. Tariffs and quotas are yet another tax.
Hillary has already said that "those with more" are going to have to pay more in higher taxes than "those with less". In other words, the most productive members of society are going to have less so the gov't has more money to give away and buy votes. Why does the gov't always raise taxes? Instead of leaving us less to live with, why doesn't the gov't pull its belt in and do with less in one area to give more in some other area? I'm tired of doing with less so someone else can have something for nothing. It's time for the gov't to do with less.
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