Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm Remarks as Delivered on Protecting Domestic Steel Jobs and Manufacturing

Thank you, Jamie [Sychak] and Matt [Allday], and everybody here for the warm welcome to Butler Works. 

You know, mills [like] this one—an institution for over 100 years—aren't just employers. They’re anchors—for Lyndora, for the state of Pennsylvania, for our entire country.  

That's because the rivers of steel that run from Western Pennsylvania certainly don't end at the Ohio or the Allegheny. They keep flowing, nationwide and worldwide... through bridges and railroad tracks... through airplanes and cars... from the frame of the Chrysler Building in New York City to the gates of the Panama Canal.  

Our nation was built with steel. Our nation was built with steel and will be built with steel made here in the United States.  

We've also seen— 

[Applause] 

Yeah, you can applaud that! 

We've also seen the flip side.  

We've seen what happens when we let our jobs and our supply chains move overseas. We've seen what happens. 

You, in the Pittsburgh area... in the industrial Midwest... I was the governor of Michigan during the time when the auto industry was on its knees. We saw so many jobs being offshored, outsourced. Uprooting families, shuttering businesses, leaving communities to pick up the pieces. 

During the first part of this century, 60,000 factories shut down across the United States. Everywhere the steel rivers ran, folks felt the impact. Offshoring softened our manufacturing backbone, and countries like China stomped on it.  

Today, President Biden is flipping that script.  

He has delivered an intentionally crafted industrial strategy to bring manufacturing back to the United States, to keep manufacturing in the United States, to put us on a path to lead the world in industries of the future.  

This isn't about next month. It's not about next year. This is about the next generation of American technology, American manufacturing, and American workers. 

We know that around the world, demand is increasing for clean products, produced with less pollution, built to last. And we want all those products stamped Made in America. I'm looking at this flag.  

[Gestures to American flag] 

We want them stamped “Made in America,” made by American workers, used here, exported around the world, proudly.  

This is why the President's industrial strategy incentivizes, making it irresistible to manufacture here at home, here in Pennsylvania. And that's why, thanks to the President's Investing in America agenda, the Department of Energy is awarding Butler Works $75 million to decarbonize the production of grain-oriented electrical steel, making your steel among the lowest emissions in the world. 

 [Applause] 

It's why your brothers and sisters in Ohio are receiving hundreds of millions as well to retire their blast furnace and install two new electric furnaces—again, the largest in the world.  

It's why the President last week called for a tripling of tariffs on Chinese steel.  

But we didn't stop here.  

The demand for power transformers, which help deliver, obviously, power to homes and businesses that use steel, produced here in Butler—that is expected to skyrocket, as you were saying, Jamie. 

So, we buckled down. And we finalized energy efficiency standards for those power transformers to optimize energy efficiency, so we can move more energy over longer distances, and to protect American steel manufacturing and American jobs.  

This process has not been easy, I know.  

I am so grateful to this community, our labor partners, the UAW, President Goncalves. I'm so grateful to you all for making your voices heard. I'm so grateful that you came to the table, that we were working this in partnership. And I hope that you're just as pleased as I am with the outcome.  

This final rule is going to save the U.S. over $14 billion in energy costs. It's gonna slash 85 million metric tons of dangerous carbon dioxide pollution, equivalent to the emissions of all the homes in Texas. It provides critical long-term certainty for domestic manufacturing investments.  

And most importantly, it protects jobs.  

[Applause] 

1,300 union jobs here at Butler Works! 160 union jobs in Zanesville, Ohio, where GOES steel is finished.  

And we know these are not just numbers. As the President always says, a union job is a livelihood. It's more than a paycheck. It does mean food on the table. It does mean the security of a home. It does mean dignity and pride for a community.  

The President believes that we can grow and decarbonize critical industries like steel, and create good-paying, high-quality union jobs. Not one or the other. We can do both.  

It is all connected. All of our investments are connected. All of our policies are designed to put American manufacturing and American workers back on top.  

And guess what? You know what?  

The strategy is actually working. It's actually working. 

Companies have announced over 600 new or expanded factories since the President took office, creating tens of thousands of jobs, just in this energy space alone. 600 factories in this energy space alone. 

From Lyndora to Las Vegas, from Braddock to Baton Rouge, from Pittsburgh to Pasadena, the rivers of steel are roaring again. I love that metaphor.  

I cannot wait to see what we build together.  

I'm so grateful for our federal partners here in Congress. It is critical that their voices have been heard as well. Congressman Deluzio, thank you for your fighting for this. Congressman Kelly, I'm so glad that you are here and serving and your voice was heard as well. So glad for your senators, who also made their voices heard.  

I'm so proud to be standing here and be able to say: Butler Works, you are going to stay in business. You're going to stay employed, everybody here. And it's going to grow, grow, grow.  

Thank you so much for your leadership, Mr. President [Goncalves]. So glad to be your partner in this. 

And I'm happy to pass the mic over to another strong UAW representative, Region Nine Director Daniel Vincente.