Barry Zekelman, President and CEO of Zekelman Industries, appeared on Fox Business just hours before President Trump signed an Executive Order to increase tariffs on steel and aluminum by 50%.
Zekelman Industries, which has long been a proponent of American steel and has “Zekelman believes in domestic steel. Learn more about the ways domestic steel pipe and conduit are better for work and better for the world” at the top of its website, is thanking the Trump administration for making this a priority.
“I want to thank the administration for their continued focus on this issue. There’s no question that’s going to have a dynamic and an immediate impact in the U.S. on steel products that come in. I think the upping the duties was the right thing to do in some cases. In some cases it’s still probably not enough.”
Zekelman and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo pointed out that Canada alone exported more than $7 billion worth of steel into the U.S. last year, along with more than $9 billion in aluminum exports. Zekelman insists Canada is being used as a proxy by China to import steel and ship it to the U.S. “Canada is being invaded by steel from other countries and like I said that needs to get pushed out,” Zekelman explained. “In cases like Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Thailand, they’re being used as a proxy by China. (They) have increased imports of steel from China dramatically and then transship it into the US or make it into various products and then ship it into the U.S. at the expense of U.S. consumers of steel. We need to balance this out, we need to push that back.”
The U.S. currently ships about $5 billion in steel to Canada every year. “The U.S. can look at Canada and realize and be certain that the back door to Canada is closed. Foreign steel won’t transfer its way into Canada, and then into the U.S.,” Zekelman added. “I think the relationship between Canada and the U.S. will definitely be much better. I think the temperature will come down and I think we can create a fortress in North America. I think that’s what the president and the administration wants. To push out all the bad actors, and China is sending all sorts of imports through all different countries.”
Zekelman compared the situation to U.S. drug prices, since so much manufacturing in that sector is done outside of the United States. “Why are drug prices so high in the U.S.?” Zekelman asked. “Drug prices are high in the U.S. because we don’t produce any of it here. That’s the problem. We don’t have that option to be efficient. We don’t have that option to negotiate against countries who ship those drugs in here because we don’t produce it here. Can you imagine if we didn’t have a steel industry where we didn’t have steel consumers? If you think the price of steel would be cheap in the U.S. because we’d be able to import it, they have us hostage. We can’t do that. It’s a high security issue.”
Zekelman says his company is still contending with a long-term trade policy, which will help guide the company’s expansion plans. “The biggest thing that we contend with is we don’t have a long-term trade policy so it’s hard for us and consumers of steel and producers,” Zekelman said. “This deal to make long-term investments, we want to know if we’re investing $100, $200, $3oo billion dollars that we’re going to have years and decades for that to run prosperously and pay off so we have to have a long term strategy. We have to have a comprehensive strategy that closes all the loopholes all the back doors like these trans-shipping countries, like the derivative products. And then we’re going to have a robust steel industry here, with robust consumers, and tremendous employment, tremendous job opportunities, tremendous income, and we will secure our nation’s future.”
Tagged with Biggest News, steel, tariffs, Zekelman