The US steel industry is pushing the Trump administration to take a sweeping view of what constitutes national security, as it seeks a crackdown on imports from China, South Korea and other countries, the Financial Times reports. Donald Trump last month ordered a special investigation into the impact on US national security of steel imports under a 1962 law that would allow him to impose far broader tariffs and other restrictions on imports of foreign steel. At a hearing in Washington, industry executives argued that illegal dumping of below-cost steel threatened their ability to supply everything from armor plating and other specialty metals used by the military, to the steel used in electrical transformers and rebar vital to construction. They called for the investigation to take a broader view of national security, arguing that without a healthy steel industry the US would quickly lose its ability to produce products that were important to things like energy security and infrastructure.
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