“Removing or weakening of these measures before major steel-producing countries eliminate their overcapacity — and the subsidies and other trade-distorting policies that have fueled the steel crisis — will only invite a new surge in imports with devastating effects to domestic steel producers and their workers,” they wrote in a letter to Biden.  

In addition to the Steelworkers, the letter was signed by the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Steel Manufacturers Association, The Committee on Pipe and Tube Imports and the American Institute of Steel Construction. 

The union and the associations argue that excess steel capacity is estimated to have reached 700 million metric tons in 2020, eight times the total steel output of the United States. At the same time, China, Vietnam and Turkey, among others, have increased their steel production despite pandemic-driven global declines in steel demand. 

“Unfortunately, the steel industry’s recovery was set back by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a significant drop in demand last spring, forcing painful job cuts as steel mills, fabricators and pipe and tube mills either cut back production or shut down entirely. As customers have restarted production, the steel industry has begun to recover, but we remain very vulnerable to new surges in imports,” the groups wrote.

You can read the full letter here.