Last month's submissions were remarkable for the contribution made by Nucor, a relatively recent convert to the use of statutory protection. Once an industry outsider- it joined the AISI only last year - Nucor has outgrown its minimill status. Its representative at the Caucus hearing presented the company as the largest steelmaker in the country, after it had turned out 10m tonnes in 2000.Nucor followed the general AISI line that the USA presents the world with an open market that attracts the excess products of over-expanded and subsidised foreign steelmaking capacity. It presented the standard AISI solution: limit annual steel imports to the average volumes in the years before the crisis year of 1998, and negotiate reductions in capacity around the world to eliminate subsidised, inefficient and "rogue" mills. It added points of its own, demanding that imports of semi-finished as well as finished products be limited, and that the campaign to close inefficient steelmakers include US as well as foreign capacity.
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