Lourenco Goncalves, president and CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources, told the audience at a company event earlier this week that the biggest threat to Minnesota’s taconite industry “isn't the global glut of iron ore mined in other nations but rather the vast amount of foreign steel that's being imported to build Amercian projects.”
According to media reports, Goncalves foreign iron ore producers cannot deliver their product to US steel mills as efficiently as US producers in Minnesota and Michigan, adding that while the US imported 23 percent of its finished steel in 2013, the import share rose to 28 percent in 2014.
Goncalves said America’s economy is relatively booming but “too many of the new projects are being built with foreign steel that is made from iron ore from Australia or Brazil, not Minnesota.”