The Trump administration is setting back efforts to make U.S. steel manufacturing both cleaner and more competitive, according to some experts.
Hilary Lewis is with the non-profit group Industrious Labs, which advocates for making heavy industry cleaner and less polluting. She said the administration has recently taken two steps which put a cleaner vision for a strong domestic steel industry in jeopardy.
One of them was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delaying the implementation of a Biden administration rule putting stricter limits on some types of harmful emissions. These were health-based standards limiting certain chemicals such as benzene and lead linked to cancers and reproductive issues, Lewis said.
But the EPA recently decided to delay that rule’s implementation by another two years, which Lewis said amounts to an increase in harmful emissions. “Almost 20% of the emissions that were supposed to be eliminated are now going to be allowed to happen,” Lewis said. “So the rule is going to be about 20% less effective than originally designed.”
Public health and environmental advocates worry that could have direct negative impacts on communities that host steel plants. In Michigan, that includes some communities in the southeast part of the state, most notably Dearborn, southwest Detroit, and its downriver communities.
The EPA said it’s delaying the deadline “in light of serious concerns that facilities will be unable to comply with the relevant requirements by the existing deadlines.”
Another point of concern is a provision in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” a mega-bill pushed by Trump that became law earlier this month. It has to do with a substance called metallurgical coal, which is often used in the first step of the steelmaking process.
But that doesn’t really apply to the U.S. steel industry, according to Lewis, who said most domestic steel is made from recycled components. Nonetheless, Trump had earlier designated metallurgical coal a “critical mineral”—which means it’s now eligible for an advanced manufacturing production tax credit included in the recent bill.
Trump has put substantial tariffs on foreign steel in an effort to boost domestic production. But Lewis said subsidizing metallurgical coal essentially works at cross-purposes with Trump’s stated goal.
“It's subsidizing all of the countries that are using our metallurgical coal to make coal-based steel,” Lewis said. “This directly undermines that effort [to promote domestic steel], because he's making foreign-made steel made with American coal cheaper by subsidizing it here.”
Lewis added that the administration has also canceled, or is reconsidering, Biden administration grants intended to build cleaner, more modern heavy industrial facilities. “That’s another example of how the Trump administration is really attacking our progress and our competitiveness in the future of the steel industry,” she said.
