The flood of Chinese steel weighing on the American industry is inflaming the election season’s protectionist rhetoric in Pennsylvania and other states, as the Obama administration moves closer to imposing import duties on the metal.
For months, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trumpand Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders have stoked voters’ deep mistrust of trade agreements and economic ties with China, Mexico, Japan and other trading partners.
Now, as voters look toward primaries in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and in other steel-producing states, broad unease about the U.S. trade deficit has found a ripe target in Chinese steel imports—at the same time officials in Washington are grappling with the issue.
On the GOP front, Mr. Trump has begun vowing to support the domestic steel industry, after previous warnings about hitting China and other trading partners with across-the-board tariffs.
“When I’m president, guess what? Steel is coming back to Pittsburgh,” Mr. Trump said in a visit there last week. He made a similar promise for Indiana, which has a primary May 3. Steel also has cropped up in the U.S. Senate race in Illinois, after U.S. Steelidled its Granite City plant last year.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said she would “aggressively pursue trade cases and impose consequences when China breaks rules by dumping its cheap products in our markets.”
Steel’s political symbolism isn’t new, and the industry has asked for help from Washington for decades, including during the deep erosion in manufacturing employment in recent decades.
But in the last two years, steel executives and labor unions have joined aluminum producers in a concerted, successful campaign to get Congress to adjust trade laws and vigorously pursue cases against Chinese producers blamed for dumping steel below fair prices or receiving improper subsidies.
Now, the combination of broad anti-China politics and the bruising global economics of steel has captured the attention of the political world, with Mr. Obama’s trade czar this month warning Beijing of “serious trade responses.”
A Brussels meeting of officials from China and advanced economies this month broke down after Beijing and other countries refused to agree output cuts, U.S. officials said.
“Unless China starts to take timely and concrete actions to reduce its excess production and capacity in industries including steel…the United States will have no alternatives other than trade action to avoid harm to their domestic industries and workers,” Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and U.S. trade representative Mike Fromansaid in a statement last week.
Some industry defenders, including Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), are pressing the administration to bring a big steel case at the World Trade Organization, which China joined 15 years ago. Others are seeking to launch processes that would allow the Obama administration to erect barriers to certain metals imports that threaten the U.S. industry or national security.
Source: wsj.com