The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Board of Directors recently approved a public policy agenda outlining the Institute’s aggressive pro-manufacturing public policy priorities, and also welcomed a new member company and two members of the Board.
“The impact public policies have on manufacturers must be carefully considered to ensure both economic growth and our national security,” said Thomas J. Gibson, president and CEO of AISI. “AISI’s policy agenda reflects the critical advocacy goals of the steel industry. We look forward to working with lawmakers and government leaders to promote this agenda and advance the nation’s economic security while preserving and enhancing manufacturing jobs.”
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 US 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 US 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, should 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.
Additionally, AISI welcomed two new AISI Board Members: Alan Kestenbaum, Executive Chairman and CEO of Stelco; and, German Curá, President of Tenaris North America.