WCA March 2017

From the Americas

According to a representative of USA steel-consuming manufacturers at an ITC hearing held in Washington in late autumn, such high duties on tool steel imports would have dire consequences for American tool and die manufacturers. As reported in Business Wire (30 th November), Mark Vaughn, vice chair of the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) and president of Vaughn Manufacturing Co (Nashville, Tennessee), testified before the ITC on behalf of the NTMA and the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA). Representing nearly 3,000 metalworking companies, together the NTMA and PMA form a “one voice” advocacy programme to promote government policies that will help ensure a strong manufacturing sector in the USA. Noting that, because most grades of tool steel are not available from domestic sources, American tool and die manufacturers must rely on imported tool steel, Mr Vaughn said that high duties on these imports would have a “devastating impact on the hundreds of thousands of well-paying US jobs that rely on imported tool steel.” In a prepared pre-hearing brief, the NTMA and PMA pressed the argument that the vast majority of tool steel imports do not compete with USA-produced tool steel. They told the ITC that the three domestic steel companies petitioning against the duties produce only minuscule volumes of tool steel, in very limited grades, and that even the major USA producers do not produce sufficient quantities or the full range of tool steel grades and types required by American purchasers. For more than three decades, tool steel – used for cutting, pressing, and extruding metals and such forming tools as dies, moulds, and blades – has been recognised as a separate product from other steel products. In Mr Vaughn’s view, this critical distinction from carbon and other alloy steel plate, used in load-bearing and structural applications, has enabled the American tool and die industry to remain globally competitive.  Mr Vaughn asked that the ITC continue to observe that distinction, asserting that imposing high import duties on tool steel would force many companies and their customers “to reconsider whether to continue manufacturing tooling in the US.” Elsewhere in steel . . .  US Steel said that it has reached agreements for the supply of iron ore pellets to third-party customers and is adjusting its production to fulfil the new commitments. The company’s restart of its Keetac iron ore plant in Keewatin, Minnesota, idled since May 2015, is set for March, employee callbacks having begun in early January. The Keetac plant has an annual production capacity of around six million tons of taconite. As well as USS, United Taconite and North Shore Mining are also reopening factories in the Minnesota Iron Range. Dee DePass of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (29 th December) credited the pickup in activity to

anti-dumping sanctions imposed on China, Brazil and Korea by the International Trade Commission.

Telecom  According to new research from J D Power, customer satisfaction with wireless routers rose a total 24 index points last year in the USA, across all ten factors, to 847 on a 1,000-point scale. Customer satisfaction rose most – 30 index points – for ease of use, which includes the installation process. The score for the ease with which users are able to restore service rose 27, from 827 in 2015 to 854. The California-based marketing information services firm also found that satisfaction with service reliability rose 24 index points; satisfaction with Wi-Fi signal rose 26 points; and download/upload speeds rose 25. Other key takeaways from its research include:  The percentage of customers who access the Internet via a wireless router in their homes varies by type of device. Most use a wireless router to connect laptops (82 per cent), followed by smartphones (80 per cent); tablets (71 per cent); desktops (55 per cent); gaming consoles (53 per cent); printers (50 per cent); smart TVs (47 per cent); and streaming device/media players (42 per cent).  The average price paid for a wireless router was $124 — an increase of $16 from 2015.  Lawmakers in both USA major political parties are expected to make amending the Telecommunications Act of 1996 a high priority in their next session, and have expressed hopes of a compromise on altering the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet rules. Meanwhile, FCC members who also belong to President Donald J Trump’s Republican party are defending so-called “zero-rating” plans for mobile data that opponents say violate those rules. The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau on 1 st December issued a preliminary conclusion that AT&T is violating net neutrality rules by using data cap exemptions (or “zero-rating”) to favour DirecTV video on its mobile network. The FCC also launched a similar examination of Verizon’s data cap exemptions. AT&T and Verizon are exempting their own video services from mobile data caps while charging other companies for the same zero-rating treatment. Republicans, who oppose the net neutrality rules and gained the FCC majority from Democrats when Mr Trump took office, are trying to shield AT&T and Verizon from FCC action. The two Republican members of the FCC had criticised the agency for investigating the two telecoms, asserting that any action taken before Inauguration Day (20 th January) would be overturned under President Trump.

61

www.read-wca.com

Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2017