Explaining the company’s decision to
shutter its steel fabrication facilities in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania and Reeds
Port, Oregon, American Bridge Company CEO Mike Flowers says the firm’s backlog
of steel erection orders and revenues from new steel construction projects are
at near record highs, but unfortunately both the projects being completed and
those on the drawing boards use steel members whose gigantic dimensions are too
expensive to fabricate in the United States. “The products the plants make no
longer matches the products needed by the construction company,” Flowers said.
Instead,
American Bridge, in a joint venture with international construction giant Fluor
Corporation, is completing the $1.9 billion reconstruction of the San Francisco
Bay Bridge using steel beams and columns fabricated in China where labor costs
are dramatically lower. Construction companies unable to find low cost
fabrication here in the US work around Congressional “Buy American Steel”
legislation by purchasing U. S. made plate, shipping it by ocean to China,
where it is fabricated into the required bridge elements and then put on
freighters returning to American ports. So much for Congressional attempts to
keep steel forming jobs in this country.
Because
highway bridge construction in the U. S. turned primarily away from all steel
bridges to less expensive reinforced concrete bridge members, the majority of
bridges currently needing repair or replacement are not within the all steel
bridge specialty of American Bridge. As a result, Flowers said, the fabricating
arm of American Bridge has been financially unhealthy for years. If Congressman
Mica’s prediction of rapidly declining federal highway construction funding is
correct, neither the steelworking trade nor the ironworking trade can take much
comfort in the highly touted “Buy American Steel” clauses Congress has inserted
into many of its recent infrastructure funding bills.
