Steelmakers ask U.S. to cut them some slack

Korea’s major steelmakers have called on the U.S. government to exclude some of their products from the 70 percent U.S. steel import quota, industry sources said Monday.

Posco-AAPC, the automotive steel cutting plant of South Korea’s leading steelmaker Posco based in the U.S., has recently asked the Department of Commerce to give an exception to grain-oriented electrical steel products it imports from Posco’s plants in Korea from the limit, a Posco official said over the phone.

Posco-AAPC imports steel to manufacture transformers in its Alabama plant. The $19 million Alabama steel cutting plant, which opened in September 2010, also cuts large rolls of steel delivered by rail and truck into parts for carmakers, including Hyundai Motor’s Alabama plant, in the Southeast region.

Hyundai Steel’s U.S. operations joined Posco-AAPC to make the same request to the Commerce Ministry to continue to import automotive steel from the steelmaker’s Korean plants for a stable supply of the products to Hyundai Motor’s Alabama plant and Kia Motors’ Georgia plant, the company said.

Yonhap