WCA March 2017

63 / 84

61
Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 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 (30th 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
(29th 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
1st 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 (20th
January) would be overturned under President Trump.