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UPDATES:

• Doyle blasts Obama administration, trade officials; calls their actions "completely inadequate": MORE


• Readers dismayed, angry about U.S. Steel layoffs in McKeesport: MORE

The city's iconic pipe mill --- one of the last remnants of McKeesport's legacy as the world's largest producer of steel pipes and tubes --- will be closed indefinitely, U.S. Steel announced today.

A U.S. Steel spokesman said McKeesport Tubular Operations and a plant in Bellville, Texas, will close in early August. Altogether, a combined 260 people will be laid off at both plants, including 45 management employees and more than 200 unionized steelworkers.

The company blamed "unfairly traded tubular products imported into the United States" for the shutdowns.

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U.S. Steel is calling the shutdowns "an idling," indicating that the plants can reopen if conditions improve.

"U.S. Steel remains fully committed to the tubular products business and to serving our tubular customers," said Mario Longhi, president and CEO. "While these are difficult decisions, they are necessary in order to return our company to sustainable profitability and position us for future growth.

"We will continue to fight unfair trade by foreign competitors who are creating a detrimental impact and threat to middle-class paying manufacturing jobs," Longhi said.

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The company and members of the United Steelworkers union held a rally in Munhall on May 18 asking for help from the federal government in blocking foreign companies from "dumping" their products on the U.S. market --- selling them below their production cost in order to hurt U.S. steel companies. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle and state Sen. Jim Brewster were among the speakers at the rally.

U.S. Steel, along with other domestic producers, has filed an anti-dumping action with the U.S. Department of Commerce to halt the unfair trading and dumping of foreign pipe into the American market.

The McKeesport plant is the last remaining operating division of U.S. Steel's National Works, which once stretched along the city's waterfront from the mouth of the Youghiogheny River to the Duquesne-McKeesport Bridge. It employed more than 7,000 people at the height of its operations and was the largest pipe mill in the world.

In McKeesport, U.S. Steel produces electric-resistance welded steel pipe, ranging from 8 to 20 inches in diameter, used mainly for gas and oil pipelines.

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Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union, said the problem in the domestic steel market is caused by countries such as South Korea, which he said produces "100 percent" of its steel pipes for export because "it has no domestic market."

South Korea, he said, "has managed to conduct business here without regulation or any kind of fair tariff in place."

Gerard pointed out that Americans have promised that the boom in Marcellus shale gas production was supposed to benefit American industries, especially the pipe industry. Those benefits are failing to materialize, he said.

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"Because of these imports and lax enforcement of existing trade laws, the domestic steel industry has yet to see the promised and expected benefits brought about by increased shale oil and gas energy production throughout America's industrial heartland," Gerard said.

He said the Steelworkers union has been warning federal officials at the Commerce Department and other agencies "for months" about the threat of plant shutdowns because of a "a flood of illegally subsidized and unfairly traded" pipe intended for the oil and gas industries.

The union, he said, will fight for "a fair and level playing field" so that workers in McKeesport and Texas "can get back to their rightful jobs as soon as possible."

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Conflict of Interest Note: The writer is a U.S. Steel investor and spouse of a U.S. Steel employee. U.S. Steel provides no input to Tube City Community Media Inc. and no remuneration.