Merry Christmas……
U.S. Steel Corp. plans to indefinitely idle “a significant portion” of its Great Lakes Works production facility in Ecorse and River Rouge and will issue layoff notices to 1,545 workers, the company said Thursday. The iron and steelmaking operations at the Zug Island plant will begin to go dark in April. No employees will be affected before then, according to a news release from U.S. Steel. The hot strip mill rolling facility will be idled before the end of 2020, it said. The company (NYSE: X) said the idling is part of an effort to become more nimble and responsive to market demand. The Pittsburgh-based steel company plans to shift production at Great Lakes Work to its Gary, Ind., steelworks facility. “In order to further accelerate our strategy of creating a world-competitive ‘best of both’ U. S. Steel, we must make deliberate but difficult operational decisions,” David Burritt, president and CEO of U.S. Steel, said in the release. “In this case, current market conditions and the long-term outlook for Great Lakes Works made it imperative that we act now, allowing us to better align our resources to deliver cost or capability differentiation across our footprint. In a separate announcement Thursday, U.S. Steel said its financial performance will be worse than expected in the fourth quarter, and the company plans to slash its dividend and suspend stock repurchases, in addition to layoffs and suspending some operations. Shares of the company were down about 40 percent over the past year. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported Chinese steel may have contributed to the pinch by boosting U.S. output just as the global economy was cooling, undercutting demand and dropping prices, according to Bloomberg. The price of domestic steel is down about 40 percent from its 2018 high just weeks after the tariffs. U.S. Steel shares are down so far this year by about 35 percent. The company will report a 98 percent drop in profits for 2019, Bloomberg reported this week. Nick Note: i do not think Trump should have a rally at this plant. Did i not hear him say he was going to make steel great again? Did i not hear how tariffs would HA HA HA protect US domestic steel producers? Well you ca not get anymore American then US Steel!