American Institute for Intl Steel Information

For over 50 years, the AIIS mission has been to promote free trade and economic growth in steel. In that effort, in recent years we have expanded our agenda to non-trade issues in support of promanufacturing olicies and in the process, have joined the National Association of Manufacturers. We have opposed cap and trade legislation and supported the reduction of job-killing taxes and regulations, which have stifled job growth in manufacturing. We have not forgotten our roots; we continue to promote international trade-liberalizing agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, and WTO, and other bi-lateral FTAs with a special focus on the elimination of steel tariffs and other barriers to trade and especially making the U.S. trade laws more commercially rational. Our opposition to subsidies and trade distorting practices by governments has led us to oppose raw material export restrictions because they distort competition as well. Working with steel consumers, AIIS played a major role in obtaining an early termination of the Section 201 duties at the mid-point review in December 2003. We have continued to support bi-lateral FTAs as well as multilateral negotiations at the WTO. AIIS also supports the elimination of Buy American preferences through international trade liberalization efforts inside the International Government Procurement Agreement because we believe that opening up international government procurement opportunities will benefit US manufacturing in general and steel.