Dale Crawford is the executive director of the Steel Tube Institute (STI) as well as director of its Conduit Committee.

Now the executive director of STI, Dale Crawford has been advocating for the steel industry for about five years. He helps monitor imports and other competing products to make sure STI members are competitive and products going out to the market are of the highest quality. A new and important concern, however, is steel import fraud, which has negative effects on the U.S. steel industry and can cause safety issues for steel consumers.

“It’s becoming quite concerning what we’re seeing, particularly in the steel conduit market,” he notes.

What’s the Problem?

Crawford explains that because the steel industry is of vital importance to national security, the federal government added a tariff on certain products in the steel category to ensure a robust domestic industry. When steel is imported from another country, it must have a harmonized tariff schedule (HTS) code indicating what type of steel it is and if it requires a tariff. Unfortunately, it’s relatively easy to circumvent the system and put a tariff code on a product that isn’t applicable.

As an example, Crawford sees importers bringing in conduit as insulated conduit, which is not applicable to the actual electrical steel conduit.

“If it is insulated, it can’t be used as an equipment grounding conductor, which means it can’t work to find a fault, which becomes a safety concern,” he explains. “We’re seeing [importers] bring products in with either no HTS code or as various other metal products with the wrong HTS code, and then they don’t have to pay a tariff.” Recently, an importer tried to bring in steel conduit disguised as playing cards.

How This Hurts the Industry

According to Crawford, such tariff fraud drastically cuts into the volume at which steel manufacturers can operate, so they may need to cut employees or not run full shifts.

“These are well-compensated jobs, and they’re the type of manufacturing jobs we need in our country to continue to grow and have a strong economy,” he adds. “And there are less of them each year as these products are brought in and sold at dumping prices—sometimes 30 percent below the market. They’re sometimes even installed in projects that require products to be made in America.”

Crawford also notes that imported steel often comes with higher carbon emissions, and domestic manufacturers are investing heavily in greener production methods.

What You Can Do

Although STI promotes domestic manufacturers, it’s open to imports if done honestly and all necessary tariffs are paid. But Crawford is appealing to the engineers, specifiers and purchasers because the tariff program currently doesn’t have enough teeth in its consequences to deter fraud and manipulation.

Crawford wants those involved to carefully look at the steel products they’re receiving. If they’re imports, they should be traced back to exactly where they came from, asking for the accompanying paperwork and verifying which HTS code it came under.

“You should make sure you’re not contributing to this issue that over time will drastically hurt our U.S. steel industry and our ability to produce products that are vital to our infrastructure,” adds Crawford.

He also recommends contacting your congresspeople and senators to share your concerns about fraud in the steel industry so they will put the power of the federal government behind the issue.

“There’s a lot of red tape and not enough teeth in the enforcement at their disposal,” he explains. “We need to make sure we have an ability to help American workers and companies, and make sure we have a resilient and robust industry for decades to come.”