Building Now For A Stronger Industrial Metals Sector

Earlier this year, MSCI launched www.build-now.org, a website for members of the industrial metals community to gather to show why Canadian and U.S. lawmakers must invest in infrastructure.

MSCI is grateful to all of the members and partners who have engaged on the site and on social media so far — and particularly grateful to our partners at Ryerson for issuing a call to action that readers can find here.

Every service center and every mill, along with every customer, is affected by substandard infrastructure. Children suffer from lack of infrastructure investment when they are packed into schools. North America suffered when it realized it lacked the hospital capacity, the ventilators, even the N95 masks we needed in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Ryerson’s team said, 2020 showed us how much Americans and Canadians take for granted, especially when it comes to infrastructure.

Building again in North America is integral to the future of the industrial metals sector. The industry is climbing its way out of the COVID recession, but U.S. and Canadian steel and aluminum shipments are still significantly below their pre-Great Recession levels. Global overcapacity certainly is to blame, as are unfair trade practices, of course. But shipments also are off because our national, state, provincial, and local leaders have failed to make comprehensive investments in infrastructure.

This is not a failure of just the last few years, either. It is generational. According to MSCI’s Metals Activity Report, 2019 pre-pandemic year-end aluminum shipments in the United States were still 18.1 percent below their 2006 peak. U.S. steel shipments were down 25 percent.

As MSCI’s partners at Keybridge Research in Washington, D.C. have shown, offshoring has significantly harmed our industry. (At that link, members also will find a webinar with Keybridge that investigates the relationship between metals service centers and residential construction. The webinar provides food for thought as policymakers consider whether encouraging affordable housing investments become part of an infrastructure program.) But imagine if the public and private sector united to invest in renewable energy, transit, and 5G, along with our schools, hospitals, and transportation infrastructure. The metals industry would flourish.

The #LetsBuildNow movement is not just about one sector, however.

According to the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE), there is a water main break in the United States every two minutes, which means an estimated six billion gallons of treated water is lost each day. Utility bills are higher because policymakers have failed to invest in infrastructure. The ASCE also estimates there are potentially 40,000 miles of levees across the United States that are at risk of failure. The next flood could be more catastrophic because policymakers have failed to invest in infrastructure.

It is up to MSCI members, their customers, and employees to tell this story. It is up to the metals community to shout #LetsBuildNow. Discuss the need for infrastructure on social media and by visiting www.build-now.org.

Please email rhietpas@msci.org if your company is interested in getting more involved.