AISI Approves 2018 Policy Agenda

Highlights of AISI’s public policy priorities include:

• International Trade: Take broad action under Section 232 to protect our national security; press China and other nations to eliminate their steel overcapacity and to end all subsidies and other market-distorting policies that promote steel overcapacity; aggressively enforce U.S. trade laws against dumping and subsidies; modernize and strengthen the NAFTA; respond to foreign government currency manipulation; and defend aggressively our ability to apply non-market economy methodology to remedy injurious dumping by China.

• Tax Policy: Maintain provisions in the tax code that ensure a competitive corporate tax rate, accelerated cost recovery, and the elimination of the corporate alternative minimum tax; and provide necessary transition rules that allow companies to carry into the new tax system net operating losses and other tax assets they have accumulated under prior law.

• Energy Policy: Ensure that regulations of energy providers do not undermine the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers, including continuing EPA efforts to replace the Clean Power Plan; continue to reverse ongoing federal regulatory efforts that limit production of domestic energy sources; and enact policy measures to facilitate investment in our national energy infrastructure, including production, distribution, transmission and storage projects.

• Environmental and Policy Regulations: Continue to reconsider EPA regulatory actions to address the impact of regulations on industrial competitiveness and ensure adequate cost/benefit analysis; and continue government and industry partnership to preserve and protect our shared environment while promoting economic growth.

• Transportation and Infrastructure Policy: Provide for increased, long-term funding for improvements to the nation’s transportation, water, energy and other critical infrastructure; enact reforms that streamline permitting to speed approval of large projects; and ensure that iron and steel used for the nation’s infrastructure is produced in the United States.

• Workforce Policy: Reform regulations that may misdirect priorities and create unnecessary costs for employers that prevent optimum workplace safety and health benefits from being realized; enact the Voluntary Protection Program Act; and work with the administration toward a cooperative enforcement approach where federal agencies and employers work in partnership to advance workplace safety and health.

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Additionally, AISI welcomed Tenaris Bay City, one of North America’s leading pipe manufacturers, as its newest producer member, along with two new AISI Board Members: Alan Kestenbaum, Executive Chairman and CEO of Stelco; and German Curá, President of Tenaris North America.