Cleveland-Cliffs to idle Weirton tinplate facility, impacting 900 jobs

WEIRTON, W. Va. (KDKA) — About 900 workers will be affected after Cleveland-Cliffs announced on Thursday that it would idle its Weirton tinplate facility.

The company said it will indefinitely idle its tinplate production plant in Weirton, West Virginia, about 40 miles west of Pittsburgh, in April after an “unfavorable” ruling by the International Trade Commission.

A WARN notice is going out to about 900 impacted employees, Cleveland-Cliffs said. They’ll be provided relocation opportunities or severance packages.

Cleveland-Cliffs and the United Steelworkers filed antidumping and countervailing duty petitions related to unfairly traded tin and chromium coated steel sheet products, and after finding evidence of dumping and subsidization, the Department of Commerce announced duties on Canada, China, Germany and South Korea. But on Feb. 6, Cleveland-Cliffs said the International Trade Commission unanimously rejected the tariffs.

“We worked very closely with our partners at the USW on this solution to save Weirton, and together fought tirelessly for its survival. In what was our final effort to maintain tinplate production here in America, we proved that we are forced to operate on an uneven playing field, and that the deck was stacked in favor of the importers,” said Cleveland-Cliffs president and CEO Lourenco Goncalves in a news release.

Goncalves called the International Trade Commission’s ruling shocking and said it makes it “impossible” for Cleveland-Cliffs to viably produce tinplate.

“The ITC’s decision is a travesty for America, middle-class jobs, and our critical food supply chains. This bad outcome requires better and stronger trade laws. We will continue to work tirelessly with our Congressional champions who fought with us in this case to improve the trade laws so that the American industry and our workers are not left behind,” Goncalves said.