News Room - Steel Industry

Altos Hornos de Mexico S.A. said Wednesday it will lay off 4,000 more employees if the Mexican government does not impose a protective tariff on steel entering the country under unfair trade conditions, while a new miners' union threatened to block roads unless an agreement is reached between the steelmaker and authorities.

The company will likely reach an agreement Wednesday with Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo on measures to combat the unfair trade practices, AHMSA spokesman Francisco Orduna told Radio Formula.

Mexico's largest integrated steelmaker, which in June laid off 4,500 workers in response to a 40 percent drop in prices in the first five months of 2015, is calling on the government to impose a temporary tariff on steel from "all countries that do not have free-trade treaties with Mexico," Orduna said.

"We're confident there will be a solution today in which the interest of defending good jobs in Mexico, as opposed to bad jobs in China, prevails," Orduna said, adding that the alternative is for the company to lay off an additional 4,000 workers starting in late July.

The Economy Secretariat said last week it was working with the National Chamber of Industry Iron and Steel, or Canacero, to tackle the crisis "stemming from the reduction in global demand, market overcapacity, the drop in oil prices and the depreciation of the Russian ruble, among other things."

That department said it "will act responsibly to preserve jobs in all steel-related industries" and pointed to measures already adopted, including a 400 percent hike in the number of investigations into unfair international trade practices in that sector, it added.

The secretariat also mentioned 31 quotas currently in place to protect the Mexican mining industry, 15 of which have been established for Chinese products.

Separately, the recently formed SNDTMMSC mine workers' union threatened Wednesday to block a stretch of Mexican Federal Highway 57, which runs from Mexico City to the U.S.-Mexico border, if Wednesday's meeting fails to yield a result it deems acceptable.

Mexico imports around 7 million tons of steel annually, much of it from countries that subsidize production or those, like Russia, whose currencies have depreciated sharply in recent months.