The board of directors of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) has approved a public policy agenda outlining the Institute’s aggressive pro-manufacturing policy strategies to guide advocacy for the upcoming year and highlight the importance of the steel industry to the success of the American economy.
According to the AISI's president and CEO, Thomas J Gibson, the impact of public policies on manufacturers must be carefully considered to ensure economic growth and national security. "Our 2017 Public Policy Agenda highlights a concerted effort on behalf of members of the North American steel industry to combat foreign unfair trade practices, create jobs, highlight our innovations and sustainability, and strengthen the manufacturing base,” he said, adding that the AISI will be sharing its priorities with policymakers and government leaders, and looks forward to turning 'obstacles into opportunities'.
The AISI's 2017 priorities include pressing China and other nations to eliminate their steel overcapacity and to end all subsidies, and enforce 'aggressively and expeditiously' US unfair trade laws. It intends to defend the right to treat China as a non-market economy at the World Trade Organisation and improve the implementation of the ENFORCE Act against trade law evasion.
Other priorities include:-
• Reducing corporate tax rate to 15-20% while maintaining accelerated cost recovery.
• Revising the Clean Power Plan and the New Source Performance Standard for utility GHG emissions.
• Ensuring the approval and completion of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and facilitating investment in the US national energy infrastructure;
• Withdrawing the EPA’s final determination for the light duty vehicle GHG standards for model years 2022-2025.
• Ensuring infrastructure funding is accompanied by reforms that streamline permitting and approval of large projects to speed project delivery time and reduce added costs.
• Directing increased funding of infrastructure improvements towards long-term, multi-year projects.