President Obama takes a question from Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton at the National Governors Association meeting today in Washington, D.C. (CSPAN screenshot)
UPDATE: U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) has issued a statement saying that White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has told him that a comprehensive plan to address steel dumping will be revealed over the next two weeks.
UPDATE II: The Duluth News Tribune reports on Obama’s pledge to address steel dumping.
Today, President Obama hosted a question and answer session with governors from around the country. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton used his time to ask the president to address the plight of miners on the Iron Range.
You can see President Obama’s response to the question about efforts to stop illegal steel dumping from China and other countries here:
President Obama committed to continue intensive efforts to identify and stop illegal or inappropriate trade violations by China. He also cautioned that international trade is an important part of the American economy and must be allowed to happen if conditions are fair to American companies and workers.
(h/t Patricia Lopez, Star Tribune)
1. For your information, Brandon Dempster is not a licensed analyst, but a junior at Fordham University.
2. January data from China shows the dollar value ($4.4 billion) of steel exports being less than what they paid to import iron ore ($3.8 billion), coking coal ($223 million) and steel $1.0 billion). Thus if they export less steel, their iron ore imports would decrease by a greater amount, something that is not good for Minnesota.
3. The selling price of U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal debt is not what they are currently paying, but the market value of their outstanding debt. This is thus an indication of what debt holders think of the credit risk. There are some people who (apparently) think, that neither U.S. Steel or ArcelorMittal can issue debt under current circumstances.
4. They key to all these companies is the value of the dollar with the strong dollar making imports more competitive. Thus the solution to the industry problem is a weaker dollar, but I don’t think that this has been widely forecast by the “so called” currency experts.
Chuck
Thanks for the information, Chuck — I think you meant to comment under this post, though: http://minnesotabrown.com/2016/02/the-mine-bosses-lament-i-owe-i-owe.html
The rest of your points are interesting, too. It doesn’t seem that there is any easy way out for N. MN except from what might arise from a stabilization of global supply and demand.
Atta boy Obama, you go get ’em..
Yawn… what a great friend he is to the blue collar union folks of this country eh? This lame effort plus Obama pushing for the TTP hopefully union labor gets smarter about who they endorse in the future.