The Daily Populous Sunday May 4th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by abcnews.go.com and submitted by Street_Anon

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs will indefinitely idle three steel plants this summer, saying Friday that it is being buffeted by sluggish demand and pricing for some products, including high carbon steel sheets.

The company said the idling of two Pennsylvania plants, one in Steelton and one in Conshohocken, and one in Riverdale, Illinois, is due to “insufficient demand and pricing” and nothing to do with President Donald Trump's tariffs.

“These temporary, indefinite idles are a necessary response to insufficient demand and pricing for the products the affected facilities produce, including rail, specialty plate, and high-carbon sheet; all of which fall outside of Cliffs’ core business focus,” the company said.

The idlings will be indefinite, and start around June 30, at the end of a 60-day notice period required by federal law. About 950 workers will be out of work during the shutdowns, Cleveland Cliffs said.

It said its flat-rolled steel production levels will not be affected.

Cleveland Cliffs in recent weeks had announced that it will idle or partially idle two iron ore mines in Minnesota, affecting 630 workers. It also said in March that it will idle a steel plant in Dearborn, Michigan, affecting about 600 workers, citing “weak automotive production in the United States."

“We believe that, once President Trump’s policies take full effect and automotive production is re-shored, we should be able to resume steel production at Dearborn,” it said.

Cleveland Cliffs did say, however, that it plans to resume operation at its blast furnace in Cleveland, which was idled last year.

duyogurt on May 4th, 2025 at 14:34 UTC »

I’ve written hundreds of company press releases and can attest that we go to great measures to wordsmith these things, and spend days crafting them while hanging on the impact of individual words and how they’ll be received by investors, analysts and the Street at large. We prep responses to potential inbound questions and go overboard in every sense of the word.

The phrase insufficient demand and pricing is the key here. The Investor Relations and Comms team burned days coming up with something sufficient to relay to the Street and…shat the bed. Absolutely anyone paying attention that matters knows what these words mean. The follow up question to our company is experiencing simultaneous *declining demand and increasing costs is “what are the primary catalysts causing your declining demand and increased costs?” If management says something akin to definitely not the tariffs they’ll get laughed out of their jobs.

Let’s see how the stock reacts tomorrow morning. The company’s earnings call is on May 8th, where they are surely going to get questioned and pressed on the economic backdrop impacting the company.

Also, in a separate release the company said in March that it will idle a steel plant in Dearborn, Mich., affecting about 600 workers, citing “weak automotive production in the United States."

“We believe that, once President Trump’s policies take full effect and automotive production is re-shored, we should be able to resume steel production at Dearborn,” it said.

Those 600 workers will likely get their jobs back in about 5-7 years, or perhaps longer.

*edit

I found some numbers. This isn’t scientific or even rigorous, but apparently ford reshored the production of the F-650 some years ago. It took about a year to get the plant going and the company sold 17,000 units that production year. That represents less than 1% of 2024 total unit sales. Good luck everyone.

wirenutter on May 4th, 2025 at 14:31 UTC »

“We believe that, once President Trump’s policies take full effect and automotive production is re-shored, we should be able to resume steel production at Dearborn,”

Oh okay. I’m sure the two thousand workers being laid off will just call up their mortgage companies and let them know once trumps policies really take effect they will resume payment on the mortgage. Surely their lender will understand and let them live for free until whenever the fuck this fantasy might play out.

AnatidaephobiaAnon on May 4th, 2025 at 14:31 UTC »

Anyone want to guess where a Cleveland Cliffs plant is that could really fuck over a lot of Trump voters? Middletown, Ohio, childhood home of JD Vance. The same plant that his beloved grandpa worked and earned a pension from that paid to raise him.

If that plant shuts down even for a bit I can't wait for the bitching and moaning from the people that voted for those two assholes to begin and the Olympic level gymnastics as they try to assign blame to anyone but them.