AISI says NAFTA has been good for steelmakers

Thomas J. Gibson, president and CEO of the Washington-based American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), says the steel industry sees the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a generally successful pact, but adds that it can be modernized and strengthened.

In testimony in late June 2017 before an interagency hearing of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on NAFTA modernization, Gibson said NAFTA has “strengthened manufacturing supply chains, contributed to increases in intra-NAFTA trade and investment and enabled a stronger relationship with Canada and Mexico” for the steel industry.

“NAFTA is the steel industry’s most important free trade agreement, as 90 percent of all U.S. steel mill product exports are to Canada and Mexico,” Gibson remarked. He added, “Since NAFTA went into force, U.S. steel exports to Canada and Mexico increased nearly threefold, and the United States moved from a large steel trade deficit with Canada and Mexico to a relatively balanced trade relationship.”

Gibson outlined the industry’s recommendations to modernize NAFTA, which includes strengthening rules of origin, more effectively promoting trade enforcement cooperation and coordination, establishing disciplines on the conduct of state-owned enterprises, establishing enforceable currency disciplines and streamlining customs procedures and upgrading border infrastructure.

“While the agreement has been beneficial, these approaches would improve it to make the American steel industry stronger, and create jobs in the process,” Gibson stated.

In its monthly summaries of U.S. imported steel data, AISI does not separately list finished steel import figures for Mexico or Canada, as it does for nations in Asia and on other continents.

In its press release covering January through May 2017, South Korea, which shipped 1.53 million metric tons of steel to the U.S. during that time, sits atop the list of largest exporters. A collection of nations labeled “all other,” which presumably includes Mexico and Canada, shipped 12 million metric tons of steel to the U.S. in that same five-month span.