A steel pipe mill in Conroe will reopen this year, and the company says it’s in part thanks to President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on foreign steel
Editor’s note: We continue to see job creation from the tariffs, though you won’t read about it in the national media.
Tenaris’ Conroe plant largely shut down three years ago, blaming the oil downturn and record levels of “unfairly traded imports.”
[ FLORIAN MARTIN | June 25, 2018 | Houston Public Media]
About 230 workers were laid off.
Now with the price of oil around $70 and new steel tariffs, the company said it will reactivate most of the plant by September.
Luca Zanotti, president of Tenaris’ U.S. operations, said they also use imported steel, for which they now have to pay 25 percent in duties. But the tariffs create new demand for their domestic product.
“We’re not buying any steel which is not either domestic or we’re transferring bars, which is the raw material that is being used in our mill here, from our other mills around the world,” Zanotti said.
Tenaris plans to hire more than 100 new employees at the Conroe plant and add another 150 workers at its seamless pipe mill in Bay City and its threading facility in Houston to support the increased production activity.
Other pipe manufacturing companies are not so happy about the new tariffs.
Borusan Mannesmann, which has a plant in Baytown, has said the new tariffs have already cost the company $2.5 million. It has asked the Trump administration for an exemption.
