by Samuel Messidor
Cleveland-Cliffs has shuttered its Weirton WV tinplate mill, indefinitely laying off all 900 workers. The company cites unfair competition for the closure, in particular the recent ruling of the International Trade Commission (ITC) which found that the international tin trade—from Canada, Germany, China, South Korea, and other countries—was not harming the domestic tin industry through unfair pricing or product dumping as alleged by Cleveland-Cliffs.
The United Steel Workers (USW) has blamed everybody for the closure but the company, joining Cleveland-Cliffs in blaming the ITC for a supposed failure to protect the domestic metal industries from foreign competition. Both the company and the union accuse “foreign suppliers” of “choking out our domestic industry.” West Virginia Democratic Senator Manchin joined the chorus of protectionist voices, saying the ITC ruling threatened economic and national security, attempting to merge the interests of the capitalists and the workers under a jingoist umbrella.
At the same time, Cleveland-Cliffs reports that its revenue after the first financial quarter of 2024 is on the upswing, and beams on its website about being included in the Fortune 500 list for 2023. They recently announced a stock buyback program worth $1.5 billion, with the company’s CEO bragging to have “returned capital to our shareholders at an aggressive rate” in the first quarter of 2024.
Cleveland-Cliffs is one of the major steel corporations in the US, and recently offered bids to purchase US Steel in competition with Nippon Steel. Cliffs portrayed itself as the better choice compared to the Japanese corporation because it is American. It received the support of the USW in the bid, who claimed that they have a good working relationship with the company.
Steel corporations in the US have been investing in recent years into electric arc furnace technology and shifting away from the older and more labor-intensive blast furnace production. This investment has led to the shuttering of steel plants and the mass layoffs of steel workers across the country as the industrial capitalists have raced to increase their profit rates at the expense of the working class, all the while spouting protectionist and nationalist rhetoric to cover their tracks.
photo: Weirton Cleveland-Cliffs workers at a USW meeting in 2023
