The chief executive officer of Stelco’s American parent company says he has every legal right to idle production at a steel mill in Hamilton, Ont., resulting in up to 500 layoffs, due in part to the bitter trade war between Canada and the U.S.

His remarks follow comments from Prime Minister Mark Carney that Ottawa will "use all powers that we have" against Cleveland-Cliffs as it pursues the company to the "fullest extent of the law."

In an interview with CBC News on Wednesday, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves called Stelco’s ability to freely sell steel produced in Hamilton to U.S. buyers an "underlying condition" to terms it agreed to when it purchased Stelco in 2024. Those include maintaining "significant employment levels in Canada" and "significant operations in Hamilton."

"We had [the] USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] in place . . . we had the ability to sell into the United States," Goncalves said. "That was an underlying condition for me to acquire Stelco.

"I would not have acquired the Stelco if I knew that Canada and the United States would become what they became — enemies in trade."

I'm looking forward to some future point when Canadians can go over the merits of Stelco's choice for layoffs. On another note, while I was reading some more, I came across an interesting report from Jerry Burnes of the Mesabi Tribune, a Minnesota news outlet, dated April 5, 2019, which traced a 2006 civil settlement between a Lourenco Goncalves and a former female employee for an alleged groping incident.

https://www.mesabitribune.com/news/cliffs-responds-to-ceo-s-2005-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-at-metals-usa/article_2cf51bb0-5801-11e9-bb5f-0723a4fbefda.html