US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Ohio Sherrod Brown
ZANESVILLE, OH – Today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) joined Zanesville Mayor Don Mason and UAW workers to highlight his successful fight pushing the Biden Administration to fix a flawed electrical distribution transformer regulation that would have cost Ohioans’ jobs and devastated U.S. electrical steel manufacturers—including Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs. Cleveland-Cliffs makes grain-oriented electrical steel used to form the cores of electric distribution and power transformers and non-grained-oriented steel used in other end uses at its Zanesville plant.
The Administration’s rule would have required all new transformers to be produced with a different kind of steel metal that’s almost entirely manufactured overseas – rather than what’s known as grain-oriented electric steel, which Cleveland-Cliffs produces in Ohio, at its Zanesville plant, and in Pennsylvania.
“This was a bipartisan effort with the mayor, UAW, Cleveland-Cliffs, and other Ohioans,” said Brown. “Together we got the Biden Administration to back down, saving union jobs in Zanesville. I will always go to bat for Ohio workers and Ohio businesses, and stand up to anyone who threatens our jobs.”
“Senator Brown understands that the United States cannot become reliant on countries like Japan, China and Mexico for our energy security. That’s why he fought back against the Department of Energy’s flawed transformer rule and helped achieved changes to the regulation that will preserve utilization of GOES in transformers. Because of Senator Brown’s successful advocacy, Cleveland-Cliffs is now making investments in the production of electrical steel and preserving good-paying, UAW jobs at Zanesville Works,” said Lourenco Goncalves, Chairman, President & CEO, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.
“The hard-working people of the Zanesville community appreciate the efforts and support of Senator Sherrod Brown and other federal legislators. Those successful efforts persuaded the Department of Energy to back off their proposal and will keep well-paying American jobs in Zanesville,” said Zanesville Mayor Don Mason. “Without those efforts, materials and supplies for the transmission grid and industry would have shifted from reliable domestic sources to unreliable offshore sources. Those efforts also support reliability in the delivery of electricity to businesses and homes at a time when reliability is most needed. Furthermore, those successful efforts support the continued investment by American companies in American cities and American workers.”
“I would like to thank Cleveland-Cliffs, our UAW leaders, and our elected officials, especially Senator Sherrod Brown, and Mayor Don Mason, who represent us and have fought against regulations that would have closed our plant, by forcing transformers manufacturers away from the Grain Oriented Electrical steel that we finish here at Zanesville,” said Eric Spiker, President, UAW Local 4104. “We are not the only ones that benefit from the work that the Senator has done. The communities that surround us, the State, and the country as well benefit.”
Brown joined Ohio manufacturers, Ohio workers, and rural electric co-ops to fight the regulation. His push—which included proposing the bipartisan Distribution Transformer Efficiency & Supply Chain Reliability Act of 2024 with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)—led the Biden administration to correct major deficiencies in the proposed rule. This bill was built upon another bipartisan Senate effort from last June when Brown, Cruz, and Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) sent a bipartisan letter to Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, signed by an additional 13 Democrats and 32 Republicans, calling on the Department to fix the proposed regulations.