says it is closing its wire-drawing mill in Hamilton, potentially affecting more than 150 people.
The decision announced on Wednesday comes after the United States doubled its tariffs on foreign
last week to 50 per cent, which has raised widespread concerns about the viability of Canada’s steel sector since it sells many of its products into the U.S. market.
A company spokesman did not respond to requests for comment, but the company said in a press release that its wire-drawing activities will be “
entirely concentrated” at its facility in
Montreal.
“We just found out this morning,” Mike Hnatjuk, president of United Steelworkers Local 5328, said. “They’re announcing it to the shifts coming in that they’re closing it at the end of the month.”
He said the union would begin negotiations next week with the company over the closure, but it was not clear if the affected employees would be let go or offered new positions in Montreal.
ArcelorMittal Long Products has the same parent company as ArcelorMittal Dofasco, Canada’s largest producer of flat-rolled steel, but the two operate independently.
Hnatjuk said the company has long specialized in a variety of wire products — such as cables for bridges, and rebar-like products — but business has slowly declined in recent decades as one product after another lost market share.
He blamed China for flooding the market with cheap steel products that make it uneconomical to produce in Canada.
Last month, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also took aim at China, saying its steel subsidization rate is more than 10 times higher than the rate in an average OECD country.
“Chinese steel exports have more than doubled since 2020, reaching a record level of 118 million tonnes in 2024,”
. “This surge has disrupted steel markets in OECD economies, leading to a fivefold increase in anti-dumping measures since 2023.”
Hnatjuk said ArcelorMittal Long Products told him that the mill in Hamilton has been losing more than US$2.6 million every year for the past five years. In recent months, he said about 25 per cent of the workforce had been laid off.
“They said even without these tariffs that this could have happened,” Hnatjuk said. “I take it as the tariffs were like the nail in the coffin.”
The announcement comes one day after Ron Bedard, chief executive of ArcelorMittal Dofasco — a different division of the same company that has 5,000 employees in Hamilton alone — said he had gotten “flat, sloppy and lazy” in terms of allowing U.S. sales to fuel his company’s growth.
He also said he would be focusing more on the Canadian market in the future, even if U.S. tariffs were eliminated. The comments came while speaking at the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association conference in Vaughn, Ont., on Tuesday and he lavished praise on his workers.
“So many of our employees are the single breadwinner in the home, and they’re some of the highest-paid industrial workers in Canada,” he said. “But they worry about the stability of our industry, and so we’re doing everything we can, with every decision … to make sure that we’re putting people first.”
Bedard said he has been meeting on a regular basis with Mélanie Joly, the federal minister of industry, and Vic Fedeli, Ontario’s minister of economic development — both of whom attended the conference.
Last week, the Canadian Steel Producers Association, an industry lobbying group, called for urgent action in response to the elevated U.S. steel tariffs.
Eddie Hutchinson, a spokesman for the CSPA, said his group wants the Canadian government to reinstate retaliatory tariffs on U.S. steel at the new 50 per cent level.
He said the CSPA also wants Canada to raise tariffs on various other countries’ steel “to stem the flow of unfairly traded steel from entering Canada and cannibalizing our industry.”
• Email: gfriedman@postmedia.com
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