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The point of this blog entry: Chinese structural steel tubing,
and the welds, fail. A lot. Don't trust those
imports. Don't try to delegitimize this issue with old, tired
"protectionist" snipes. Just make the stuff right.
Structural
steel tubing is used in piping system support and in structures where
I-beams and other larger steel members are not needed.
"Structural" means it supports stuff, it supports loads, and must
resist impacts. Schools are constructed with it. Schools
have our children inside them. Structural steel is often welded,
and the welds need to
withstand the same loads or impacts as the areas not welded.
First some fun facts
on free trade in steel: $52 billion in Chinese government
subsidies for the industry each year. 91% of the production of
the top 20 steelmakers in China is government owned. "Comparative advantage" is irrelevant under these conditions.
The
publication American Metal Market has this information, which I can't
link to because it is subscription only, and you probably don't have a
subscription.
From the September 4, 2007 issue:
A Morinville, Alberta, fabricator said its examination of Chinese
tubing revealed material that in weld tests "failed horribly all the
way down," resulting from such defects as cold lap cracks and lack of
fusion. "There was no basic fusion in the weld," Dan Malone,
construction manager of Garneau ManufacturingInc. (GMI), said. ... "Somebody could have died over this."
From the September 12, 2007 issue: U.S. Steel reportedly
destroyed tens of thousands of tons of imported tubular structural
tubing from China.
"They cut it up (and) threw it into the furnace," a source said.
"They didn't like the quality, and they didn't want to put it in the
market." ... The imported pipe could have been a liability for
the company, which apparently decided that the material was not even
suitable to be sold on the secondary market for structural
applications, sources speculated. Domestic groups also allege
that some Chinese mills are selling product illegally stenciled with
the logos of other mills.
From the September 14, 2007 issue:
One congressman [Rep. Gene Green (D., Texas)] reportedly
has called for hearings to investigate the charges, according to a
recent report by Houston station KPRC on Chinese tubing for school
construction and other public uses that it said might not be "strong
enough to keep your family protected."
U.S. companies get nervous about pointing out problems. The same September 14 AMM issue included this:
Meanwhile, one tubing mill, Atlas Tube Inc., sent a letter to
customers last week apparently seeking to separate itself from any
possible controversy over the North American industry's role in the
Chinese tubing issue. The Harrow, Ontario, producer said that while it
was aware of "secondary testing" on Chinese hollow structural sections
by independent laboratories, "we are not in a position to make a
statement as to the validity of the quality concerns" connected with
the Chinese product. Atlas emphasized in the letter that it had "never
used Chinese coil to manufacture HSS in any of our operations nor have
we purchased any Chinese HSS with the intent to resell this product on
the open market." An Atlas executive couldn't be reached forcomment.
The substandard import quality issues impact products in
many, many categories. Thus the counter-intuitive call, by many
industries, for more regulation, because voluntary standards don't work
out when fraudulently low standard imports come in masquerading as the
real deal.
Yes it is "fraud": Product is affirmatively
represented as being of a particular quality for a particular
use. And it is not. Some other people also call that lying.
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