The call of a supervisor reached the steel floor in Sheffield, England, on Thursday afternoon: the tariffs were out. “Everything had changed for us,” said Richard Bott, while standing near the steel slabs batteries that still radiate heat waves from the mill.
In a commercial agreement with Great Britain announced with a lot of fanfare on Thursday, President Trump agreed to lift the 25 percent tariffs on the steel that had raised a terrible threat to the struggle industry of Great Britain and for Mr. Bott’s employer, Marcegaglia Shefless Sheffield.
The cavernous plant is one of the last large steel manufacturing facilities in a city that since the 18th century was an innovation center in the industry.
The plant is now old and dusty, but it is somehow the avant -garde. Use an electric oven, a technology that the government wants other mills to adopt to reduce emissions, to melt piles of bright stainless steel scrap metal in molten metal.
Marcegaglia, part of a family business in Italy, sends more than 100 million pounds (or around $ 133 million) of Great Britain to the United States annually, around a quarter of the country’s steel exports.
American tariffs, which were announced in February, but entered into force in March, added substantial costs and complexities to what was already a decline industry. British steel manufacturers are struggling with weak demand, external competition and high energy and environment costs.
The difficulties were recently highlighted when the government control of the last large steel factory in Great Britain, in Scunhorke, about 90 minutes by Sheffield’s car, for fear that the Chinese owners of the plant would close it.
Marcegaglia, that the ships ended and semi -finished stainless steel products to the United States, where it has a factory in Richburg, SC, was seeing “a deceleration in demand as customers decided whether Teay was to pay the saying or not.
In an effort to mitigate the damage, Marcegaglia ran to load a barge with steel and send it through the Atlantic to arrive before the rate effect effect, but arrived too late, adding millions of dollars in costs.
On Friday, there was a cautious feeling of relief at the plant, which uses 440. “It is good news for the company and the country,” said Ryan Johnson, a project engineer.
Christian Bruggmann, the plant’s director of operations, said he had thought that tariffs would rise in large part of the material that Marcegaglia exported to the United States. “At least some of our clients in the United States will raise the phone and try to work,” he said.
The company’s officials, they thought, say they still do not know what the agreement for the products that are sent from Great Britain to countries of the European Union as Sweden for subsequent processing and then in the United States.
The 25 percent tariff on imported steel to the United States is still in force for other countries. It remains to see which tariffs will end up applying to the European Union, creating a great stranger for a British business that sends large amounts of its production to both Europe and the United States.
The impulsive approach to the Trump administration policy also creates uncertainty and confidence, they say.
“There does not seem to a structure, so you cannot plan anything,” said Tracey Wilshaw, plant planning manager. “What does not give us any stability at all.”
Even so, Mrs. Wilshaw said she was more optimistic after Thursday’s announcement.
Steel UK, an industry group, welcomed the decrease in tariffs, saying that the United States was the second most important market in Britain for steel after the European Union, representing about 9 percent of sales by volume.
The Prime Minister of Britain, Keir Starmer, has recently increased to the defense of the national steel industry, but these companies are decreasing and remain in danger. Only 35 percent of the demand for steel in Britain is now with national production, according to Steel UK.
Dave Brooks, manufacturing manager of Marcegaglia, recalled to join the steel business as a 16 -year -old apprentice in 1986 and have the opportunity to work in other facilities, including a research and development center.
These units said that all legs closed in the waves of corporate acquisitions and consolidations in the British and European industry in recent decades.
Even so, steel workers seem to be a resistant community that enjoy work mainly and makes little sense when you look at discounts.
“Just smile and bear,” said Simon Flynn, a contractor.
