A Jeffersonville company has been granted relief from a Trump Administration trade policy that went into effect more than a year ago.
POSCO Steel said that will allow it to increase production, which could create new jobs.
The business, headquartered in South Korea, opened a location in the Port of Indiana in 2017, but policies led to trade restrictions on steel and aluminum in 2018.
A request for relief, sent to the Department of Commerce, stated the trade restrictions resulted in slowed production because the company could no longer buy needed materials only made outside the country.
Critics of the trade restrictions said that put jobs at risk.
Indiana Rep. Trey Hollingsworth wrote the Department of Commerce, on behalf of POSCO, asking for the restrictions to be lifted in the specific case. Now, the federal government has granted that exclusion request.
The company released the following statement:
POSCO’s newly invested wire rod facility in Jeffersonville was struggling to operate at a normal capacity due to the lack of raw materials and trade restrictions related to the Section 232 measures. However, with Rep. Hollingsworth’s continued support throughout the entire process, we successfully had the Department of Commerce grant exclusions for our raw materials from the Section 232 tariffs and quotas restrictions. We expect this to not only increase our capacity utilization by about 30%, but also allow us to hire more people and continue with our planned expansion investments that were on indefinite hold. As part of the Jeffersonville community, we hope to continue giving back to the community moving forward.
(Ukrainian metal)