The Commerce Department’s Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) system allows U.S. steelmakers to monitor steel trade, but there are ways to improve the system, especially given changing global trends.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing joined seven steel industry groups and the United Steelworkers (USW) in making the request to the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration (ITA) on Monday. Make important improvements to a program essential for monitoring steel import data.
of Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) System It collects and publishes “early warning” statistics that provide U.S. steelmakers and workers with critical insight into trends in the steel trade. The program allows “domestic producers to monitor trends in the steel trade in near real time,” and revisions made in 2020 to require SIMA to provide more information on the country of origin of “melt and pour” steel have provided even more critical data, the organization said. Written Dawn Shackleford, the agency’s executive director of treaty policy and negotiations.
But international trade is constantly changing, and “the industry continues to face new and evolving trade challenges,” so efforts need to “build on the success of this important program,” the letter said.
Expand SIMA monitoring to downstream steel products. Countries seeking to evade U.S. trade enforcement often look “downstream” in the steel supply chain — think of construction materials like rebar and steel sheets — so having accurate data on these products is key to policing steel trade.
“Access to these timely statistics will facilitate the identification of potential transshipment and evasion of Section 232 and/or Section 301 China tariffs on downstream steel products,” the groups wrote. “While we understand that expanding the SIMA regime to all downstream steel products will require significant resources, we encourage ITA to work with the domestic steel industry to identify subsets of steel products that would particularly benefit from increased import monitoring, such as products subject to existing AD/CVD orders or products where producers can demonstrate that imports are expanding U.S. market share and displacing U.S. producers.”
It’s not just construction materials that would benefit from increased downstream oversight — in fact, this was one of the suggestions in our recent report. Collision Courseexamined the significant threat posed by cheap auto imports from China. We wrote: “Improved visibility into steel products and steel-containing products, such as auto parts, would enable policymakers to identify problematic trade flows earlier and take steps to prevent damage to the U.S. economy before it is too late.”
Increased cross-border data sharing. The Biden administration is encouraging trading partners to deploy their own surveillance tools to “increase data sharing and transparency, and to detect and address evasion or circumvention of trade remedy laws and Russia sanctions,” the groups wrote. But not all countries are doing their part.
The letter cites Canada and Mexico as examples. The U.S. repealed Section 232 tariffs on both countries in May 2019, and the two countries agreed to “address import surges” and “prevent the transshipment of steel and aluminum from third countries.” While Canada has done its part, the groups argue, Mexico is lagging behind.
“We are increasingly concerned that official trade statistics issued by the Mexican government inadequately identify the country of origin of certain items entering Mexico (which are simply reported as ‘unconfirmed,'” the letter read. “Without these critical data, it is impossible to identify illegally traded products that may be flowing into the United States. Additionally, Mexico has not yet launched an export monitoring regime to ensure that steel trade flows are consistent with the 2019 Joint Agreement. We commend the U.S. government for continuing negotiations with the Mexican government and hope that a final agreement will be reached soon.”
Ensures accurate import data. What’s most important, the group said, is that the data provided by the SIMA program is as accurate as possible, but “industry groups often find errors in the SIMA data.”
“We urge continued monitoring and collaboration with industry to ensure accurate data needed to understand trade flows and effectively enforce Section 232 remedies and other trade remedy laws,” the groups wrote.
