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Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, February 21st.

And I'm Mark Ross, retired managing partner of TWC and president of the City Club Board of Directors.

What an honor it is to be here to introduce today's forum, which is the John W Barkley Memorial Forum and presented in partnership with GCP.

Today we have the privilege to hear from the literal man of steel.

Lourenco Goncalves, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cleveland-cliffs.

I am excited about today's forum for several reasons.

First, at the earliest days of my career with Pricewaterhouse, I worked on the audits of several Cleveland-cliffs mines, which allowed me to travel to exciting destinations including Hibbing, Minnesota and Labrador, Newfoundland, giving me a lens into the story of the Cliffs organization and its history, which dates back into the 1800s.

Today, Cleveland-cliffs stands as the 24th oldest company in the nation and the largest flat rolled steel producer in North America.

Second part of my retirement fun is teaching a class at Miami University on mergers and acquisitions.

Cliffs has given me multiple case studies.

Given there are numerous acquisitions over the last several years.

Cliffs has grown revenue from 2 billion in 2019 to nearly 20 billion in 2024, fueled by acquisitions including this Delco Steel transaction.

In late 2024, the impact of which will be fully reflected in 2025.

And perhaps most important, you'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the ongoing conversations and merger discussions surrounding the future of U.S. Steel.

The role Cliffs may play, its impact on the two companies and arguably the future of the entire steel industry in the United States and world.

I hope you would agree with me, and given the size of this crowd that today's discussion is a quintessential conversation conversation of consequence.

Since 2014, Mr. Gonzalez has been chairman, president and Chief executive officer of Cliffs.

He designed and led the company through a major strategic initiative, transforming cliffs into a leading player in the U.S. steel industry.

Prior to joining cliffs, he served in multiple executive roles in the steel and broader manufacturing industry, including ten years as chairman of the board, president and CEO of Metals USA Holdings, as well as five years as president and CEO of California Steel Industries.

Moderating today's conversation is Bijou Shaw, president and CEO of Greater Cleveland Partnership, a key player in the region's economic development ecosystem.

And with over 12,000 members, it is the largest metropolitan chamber of commerce in the nation.

If you have a question for our speaker, you can text it to 3305415794 and the City Club staff will try to work it into the Q&A portion of the program.

Members and Friends of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming Lorenzo Gonzalez and Bijou Shaw.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Dan, for inviting this very important conservation, a conversation of consequence.

And it's my pleasure today to moderate a discussion with our Superman, the Man of steel, Lorenzo Gonzalez.

Lorenzo.

Mark sort of described a lot about the company, Cleveland Cliffs, and sort of the scale and certainly the growth that you've had.

I want to start with the basic question that it's probably important for you to present your perspective.

Why is manufacturing in America so important?

Why are you so passionate about manufacturing in America?

Take a big role there.

Mark, a great honor to be here.

Cleveland is the center of the insurgency.

Cleveland will be leading, what, in the next ten, 20 years will be a new United States of America that will replicate the United States of America that the entire world tries to imitate.

Matter of factory is important because superpowers are built on manufacturing.

I'll give you a few examples.

One, The United States of America.

We built ourselves in the back of manufacturing.

Second one, Japan.

pre-World War to do our superpower in manufacturing before they became a military superpower and start to invade the all countries in Asia.

It was not that long ago.

It was not that long ago.

It was less than 100 years ago when Japan invaded China and create a puppet regime in Manchuria.

People forget these things, but because we are far away.

But for the Asians, they still remember very well.

Ask people at the Philippines or people in Taiwan, or people in Malaysia.

Keep going.

Korea.

The latest and more recent example is China.

China is the best student in the entire world.

They speak on everything that we do that is right and replicated multiplied by a thousand.

And then they put on the population.

It's right now 1.4 billion people to do exactly what they would like to do.

That's why they built their superpower manufacturing at the same time that China was building, replicating exactly what Japan did after World War Two with our support, our help, our technology, our money, our everything.

Mm hmm.

China did it in a way that they could benefit much more than Japan benefit this before.

And then they dominated what we're doing.

At the same time, we are saying that's fine, that's okay.

Let's invite them into the WTO.

That was around 2000.

At that point, it was basically like Bond, James Bond, a license to kill.

And they killed the Midwest because the Midwest where Cleveland was center was the center of their strong United States.

At that time, Cleveland was the fifth largest city in the country, number five.

So that's what all distinct that distinct that that are going on right now will bring back.

We'll bring it back.

Manufacturing.

We are bringing back steel.

We put steel back in the conversation.

It's no longer an afterthought because all these things matter.

All these things build middle class, all these things build employment, and middle class and employment are the foundation for democracy.

Democracy is not about creating billionaires and a lot of poor people.

That's what happened in Brazil, and that's the reason why am great 27 years of work.

Because I could not fix that thing anymore.

Now we are at the very moment that when I compare the San Francisco of 2000 with the San Francisco of today, it's night and day.

And that's where Silicon Valley is.

That's where the billionaires are.

That's also where poverty is skyrocketing.

If you want to kill democracy, let them multi-billionaires separate themselves from the people of this country.

The constitution of this country starts.

It starts with we the people.

These are the three most important words of the Constitution.

It's we, the people.

We need to make everybody back together and not separate.

San Francisco is the ultimate example where separation is happening.

That's where the billionaires are in where poverty is growing so fast.

Cleveland, We are an afterthought.

Not anymore.

We are in the conversation.

We are in the room.

We are influencing.

We are bringing things back to ourselves, to our safety, to our kids, to our grandkids.

And that's what we are doing right now with manufacturing.

Thank you.

So so I knew moderating this was going to be a lot of fun and it was going to be pretty easy because I knew that our guest was going to take us in multiple directions.

I could choose any one of those strands, but I stopped basketball.

We are going to talk basketball.

In fact, though, guys, notice that the Cavs are on the run to be champions is Here we go.

If we're lucky, we can also talk about women's basketball, but we'll see about that afterwards.

But let's talk a little bit about a couple of these threats that you put out on the table.

So you've spent a lot of time engaged in politics.

Every president from my lifetime has expressed how important manufacturing is right.

But when you look at the numbers, well, the output has been growing.

The employment has been basically declining over that same period of time.

A lot of that is because of technology making it more productive in terms of manufacturing.

What do you think we need to do as a country to really bring back more manufacturing for national security and prosperity?

Well, the very first thing we did to plug the drains and stop the leaks and when everybody takes advantage of the fact that cheap goods are here and don't see the big picture, we are going to be trapped.

We're going to be in a situation that you can't really compete when the playing field is not leveled.

So if you have subsidies, if you have child labor, if you have entire populations being squeezed down by their totalitarian governments and producing things that are artificially cheap, and we here at the side of the world, here in the United States of America, we buy these things and we all do, including myself.

We are enabling that.

So we need the government to act to plug the drain.

So I know that if you don't ask me, I'm going to bring it anyway.

Let's talk about let's talk about tariffs.

Let's talk about tariffs.

Yeah.

I'm not going to do that.

Who is in favor?

Who is that?

Everybody's, I guess.

But let's try to understand what tariffs are necessary.

Let's think about steel.

And let me give you an example that should resonate with with this audience here.

Everybody talks that steel will be a lot more expensive with the tariffs with 25% discount.

Okay.

You they're doing that.

Well, think about one car.

Each car you want to invest, you one car, one tariffs.

You just want to talk about the cars are different size.

Absolutely.

A Cadillac Escalade has 1.1 tons of steel, but a Toyota Camry has 4.95 tons of steel.

And I'm using Toyota because Toyota Camry is produced right here.

Kentucky, your high.

So so is America, by the way, Toyota is a very and Toyota North America is a very American company.

Therefore, you got to believe that I have any bias or anything went off steal one car.

So let's go back to my Cadillac Escalade.

Mine was the $107,000 after I got a factory discount because I'm the biggest supplier of steel to without the discount, it would be more.

Well, let's stay with that 107.

Yeah.

To start with, you're $107,000 price of the car.

We're going to put that not a 25% increase on my steel.

I put 50% on my steel because I'm really, really a bloody bad capitalist, so I'm going to go for the cure.

So instead of charging $700 for my thoughts, steel, I'm going to charge 50% increase 1050.

What was the increase in the price of my Escalade instead of costing 107,000, now it costs 107 350.

Would that preclude me from buying my escalate?

I'll let you guys think 5 seconds.

That's what steel is.

It's infrastructure infra structure at the bottom of the thing, killing the infrastructure, killing the foundation is the best way to bring the house down.

That's why is steel is not part of the conversation or was not part of the quote you mentioned politicians and why I'm involved in politics.

In politics.

I have to educate these guys.

Yeah.

Because if I don't, nobody will.

Because Wall Street is in the business of selling the next quarter.

I'm in the business of selling the next generation.

That's a big difference.

Yeah.

I run my company for what's going to happen in the next five years.

That's why when you look five years back, I was a mining company and now I am the largest steel company because that's why companies that don't run for the next quarter do what I was doing last quarter, last quarter or it preannounced.

So that's fine.

What I'm going to say, I was building the inventory of billets because I knew what was doing, what was coming.

This billets I'm going to use, I'm using now I'm going to use next quarter, the following quarter, because that's the feedstock to produce steel.

But Wall Street doesn't care.

They only care about the quarter.

Hmm.

I don't.

And I'm the biggest individual shareholder of Cleveland-cliffs, so I'm playing with my own money.

So that's very important for everybody to know.

So we need to have a much more of a long term view on things.

And Wall Street is not going to help.

We need to educate the politicians.

They come every fortnight or presidents every four years for their votes.

In case of a congressmen, they come all the time for the votes.

In term of the senators, they come every six years.

The only thing they have in common they come for the votes.

Yeah.

So we are here for the day today.

We are the ones that have to go to public square and see homeless people.

We are the ones that have to deal with the consequences of violence and things like that is to Cleveland.

We need to engage in include everybody.

That's the way to do it.

It's the steel, it's aluminum, it's manufactory.

They're multiplying impact on jobs that only is stupid.

Manufacturing can bring, particularly to the Midwest that was gutted out during the last 50 years.

Get a lot I'll bet you for this crowd that does not know our CEO here there's probably a lot that he's been saying that has probably surprised you.

It's not typical that you would expect this from let's call a stereotypical CEO because they're all all nervous about being fired by the board.

Yeah, that's something that and by the way, I have one board member here with me, so I am not if they fired me, I rode side, didn't run a hostile takeover and take my company back.

So they don't even try doing that.

By the way, that's exactly how I got here.

Yeah, I was not hired.

You were not hired, but you do want to tell the story about to take a long time, so.

Okay, let's now listen.

I was simply saying that the company was going the wrong direction.

Myself and Kieslowski for this has been with me since metals work since 2003 on this course.

And I when I realized that my run at metals with sales coming to an end, it was time to return money to the investors and we multiply the value of that company by 20.

And then we sold to a new strategic excuse and I studied three companies Cleveland-cliffs, AK Steel and U.S. Steel.

I said this three belong together and I need to get all three.

Which one is easiest to start to conclude?

That was Cleveland-cliffs even though Cleveland-cliffs was a mining company.

But Cleveland-cliffs was a supplier of the other.

So what?

Cleveland-cliffs tried to do a a friendly deal but didn't work.

So I did it the unfriendly way.

Got here, then I bought AK Steel and the next one would be us still.

There you go.

Yeah.

So let's talk about the role of CEOs.

You know, you're again, I think you've got a different perspective on it.

Talk about what you mean by sustainable business and about taking care of all of your stakeholders.

Why is that?

How do you think about your stakeholders as you operate and grow?

CLEVELAND-CLIFFS Well, first, think a sustainable business needs to do is a return on investment.

Yep.

Otherwise it can't be sustained.

That's right.

So there is still prices that are breakfast all over the world, particularly in countries that hurt us like China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia.

These are countries that steel is completely subsidized.

And if you you don't need to really understand the the the ins and outs of how these things really work inside each one of these countries, even though we do.

But you don't need to do that just following the stock market and the companies that are listed in the New York Stock Exchange with the dealers and things like that, no matter what happens with their companies, with their countries, their stock price is steady.

You doesn't fluctuate.

I'll give you an example.

Nippon Steel.

If I was pursuing a company to acquire for a year and a half, I promise you I would have been bankrupt by now because my stock price would go to pennies, I would be delisted and things like that.

Yeah.

Nippon Steel.

Enough.

So good.

They can't lose money at will because the Japanese government to come and give them more.

Last year they got $3 billion.

That's exactly what they made in terms of a bid.

So that was a goose egg, the real bidder.

But that doesn't, I don't know, press what the house doesn't audit.

This guy's right.

So because nobody cares.

Nobody sees this thing.

So no, for a lot less work.

So Vinson Elkins was unraveled when I was in Houston, where there are people forget this things.

But anyway, it happens a lot.

Same thing.

China, the biggest steel company in the world, is ball of steel.

Their number five is major boast you won't mention.

So they did number one and number five are all together and they are all they all report to the Chinese Communist Party.

So it's all the same thing.

So sustainable company needs to make money.

That's number one.

Second needs to invest in people, train people, and we need to have a vibrant community community that can help that happen and a vibrant community that will be attractive to people to move to the area, to work with us.

So these are what sustainable, in my opinion, is.

Let me let me follow on two threads there.

So on people debate, you gave me a fun fact that I want you to share with this crowd.

Tell them what the median wages for workers at Cleveland-cliffs $145,000 a year.

It's the median wage is $145,000.

That's called middle class wage.

It's a very maybe upper middle class wage, but it's a it's a big it's a big wage, but middle class.

Middle class.

So you are also known to be very, very pro-union.

You've got great working relationships with all of the unions across your organization, the steelworkers, the autoworkers and the machinists.

Again, as a CEO, the stereotypical CEO is stereotyped as being anti-union.

You're very pro-union.

You obviously pay your team members well.

What what makes you so pro-union?

Pro-worker, Because not all companies and by the way, a very a big number of companies that are very nonunion and there are still good.

So you don't need to be a union company to be a good company.

But it's very easy to be a bad company when you don't have a union.

And you know what?

For the same reason that this club exists to give voice and give the opportunity to people that cannot talk to power, to be able to write down that what you had just said to me, it's the same thing.

Unions are a way for the average Joe and Jane to be heard because not all CEOs will be willing to listen.

Yeah, and sometimes in order for people to listen, you need to force the subject a little bit.

Yeah.

A guy like me, I do hostile takeovers or friendly deals if the other part is okay.

But in the case of the workers, they need the union to represent them well in the unions, plural, unions are important and workers are very important.

Yes.

To you and obviously to the success of the company and the success of our community.

The other topic that I want to bring you've been very vocal about is decarbonization, another topic that's important in the business community.

Please share your perspectives on why decarbonization is so important to the steel industry and including your views on sort of how you might approach it from a steel producing perspective.

The very first thing with decarbonization is to qualify things the way they really are.

My sector is called hard to decarbonize.

That's the first upsurge.

My sector is a sector that here in the United States do not even contribute to carbon emissions in comparison with the rest of the world and inside the United States.

If you compare the steel industry with other industries, the difference is even more abysmal.

Let me give you a few numbers.

Transportation.

Transportation is basically tailpipe emissions from cars.

Transportation is 29% of the CO2 emissions of the United States is still is true.

2%.

Why is that?

Why are you are so low?

Several things.

Very.

First thing is the fact that here in the United States, more than 70% of the is still making use a process called electric arc furnace.

So we are on the other side where the blessed for the site but 70% already move toward electric arc furnaces.

Why we don't move the rest.

What cleveland-cliffs does not do just that if the difference is so favorable because if we do, we are going to produce some steels, but not all steels And the very first type of steels that will not be able to produce will be steel for cars.

So the automotive industry depends on companies like Cleveland-cliffs in the United States or Nippon Steel in Japan or Voestalpine in Europe, and so on and so forth.

So these companies play a role in order to be able to continue to produce the type of materials that are used in things that you guys use every day.

If we don't, someone else will and someone else will be located outside of the United States.

What's the percentage of electric furnaces in Japan?

20%.

What's the percentage of electric furnaces in China?

9%.

And what about the United States?

So again, 77 0%.

So we already did our homework long ago.

We we are done.

We have already done what we're supposed to be doing.

So what's left needs to be preserved.

So for you guys that drive by my plant, make sure to know that that plant is there to stay if you don't like it.

Sorry.

That plant will be there exactly the way the plant is.

And the amount of CO2 that we produce in that plant is 1.5 tons of CO2 per ton of steel.

If we don't produce that 1.5 here, we're going to have to buy from Japan.

And Nippon Steel produced 1.96 tons of CO2 per ton of steel on the average of all their plants.

To compare apples with apples, Nagoya works Nippon Steel in that Goya, Japan with Middletown, Ohio, Cleveland-cliffs in Middletown is 1.39.

In Nagoya is 2.04.

So by buying from us you are buying steel that not you, but General Motors, Ford that Toyota Stellantis, everybody else these folks buy from us.

They are buying steel that's more or less 35% less carbon intensive then Japan.

I'm not talking got dense off the charts.

Yeah China is better.

China's at this point, believe it or not.

China is better than Japan.

China is producing fewer tons of CO2 per tons of steel then Japan and China.

Now the numbers are 1.85.

We're going to be out with our sustainability report very soon.

Tracy will be very specific about these things and then don't forget one point.

If they just producing in Japan or China or Korea or Germany or whatever, wherever you also need to put that steel in a vessel that's vessel burn diesel, and then the vessel come to the United States.

And then we're going to have transportation here deliver it to the plant.

Here is a lot a lot more than the number that I have.

That's the number of the plants.

That's right.

But nobody talks about that wall Street.

Make sure that you don't address that because you know that next quarter is so important.

Not any more tariffs are coming.

The the drain has been plugged.

There you go.

I've got one more question and then we're going to turn it over to the audience for questions.

So please prepare your questions as well as for those of you that are listening in at home or at work.

So let me close with this question for our session.

When you took over cliffs, you felt it was very important.

Put the name of Cleveland back into the company's name.

Why was it so important to you to put Cleveland back into the name of the company?

Because I believe that the Midwest is what the United States is about in Cleveland is the best translation of the Midwest.

Cleveland.

Cleveland is a city that outsiders love to bash.

They even know why, but they do.

And the others, even in the Midwest, they take pride on being authentic.

Cleveland, all distinguished US steel.

And it was true in Pennsylvania and Ohio and things like that.

This is interesting because we are together.

Pittsburgh is Cleveland.

Same thing.

I actually called in East Cleveland all the time, but I do.

I said that the other day to Governor SHAPIRO.

He didn't like it very much.

So let's talk about names.

And I said, yeah, I'm going to keep U.S. Steel, but when I have to change Pittsburgh to East Cleveland, that's a trade off.

So anyway, we are all in the same boat.

We're victims.

We put a plant in Toledo that we built in 2018.

That's the state of the art direct reduction plant in the world is still after six years, we're still the most modern direct reduction plant in the world.

I thought by now someone would have built something better.

No, they didn't.

So in Toledo, Toledo changed so much.

Since we put our plant there.

We attract so many people because jobs in steel attract downstream jobs upstream.

You know, we become bigger clients of the energy companies, and that's how things work.

So we promote technological development.

We are the ones implementing hydrogen in terms of decarbonizing.

Yep.

And these things only happen because we're investing for us $1,000,000,000 when the revenues of the company are true.

It's very difficult to do it without the profits, the revenues.

So we put that billion there.

I don't regret for a second, but that thing was able to open the eyes of a lot of people, not only to Cleveland, but to the entire region and how powerful we are when we are together.

So I don't play that game of separating Pennsylvania and Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota.

And first of all, I'm in all of these states, Kentucky, Illinois, I'm everywhere.

That's number one.

And number two are the problems that they suffer are the same problems we have.

The difference that I came here before to blame someone, blame Keith.

If if the kids have convinced me to go to U.S. Steel first, I probably would have agreed with him.

But I decided to come here first and I bought glyphs.

Then I bought the AK Steel and then I bought ArcelorMittal USA, kicked the Europeans Indians out of here.

And by the way, there are 50 50% partners with Nippon Steel in the United States, in one plate in Alabama, and another one a mega plant in India.

India, build a bigger one in India.

It is the next problem, but that will be for another day.

They are all in this together.

Midwest is that one same thing?

The good thing is that Midwest is coming back right now with the manufactory, with the revitalization of all these things that were the that made this country so big and the envy of the world.

Now the foundation is all here.

We are going to bring it back.

Fantastic.

So so speaking on behalf of GCP, we love that Cleveland is in your name and we love that you're calling Pittsburgh, East Cleveland.

So thank you.

And thank you for our live stream in our radio audiences.

And as you show up, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership and moderator for today's conversation today, we are joined by Lorenzo Gonzalez, president and CEO of Cleveland-cliffs.

We've been discussing the future of American steel manufacturing and cliff's impact on economic development right here in Greater Cleveland.

We're welcoming from everyone city club members, guests, students, as well as those joining our live stream at City Club dot org or live radio broadcast at 89.7 Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for our speaker, please text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Maybe we have the first question, please.

Hey, first question.

This is a tax question.

We talk a lot about effective workforce development in this community.

What is Cliff's need for the regional workforce development ecosystem?

Yeah, at this point we do a lot in-house because we have no choice.

I have we have a series of false starts on working with local universities, community colleges, technical schools.

But we have never really we're never able to gain enough traction.

I believe that that's because steel and manufacturing are not trendy yet.

Once manufacturing and steel become trendy again, it will be a lot easier.

When I was growing up in Brazil, I would like to be an engineer because Brazil was developing, Brazil was building you steel plants, nuclear plants.

The car manufacturers are all moving to Brazil, Fiat, Volkswagen, Ford, General Motors, everybody, Honda, everybody was coming to Brazil to build plants.

So being an engineer, you was an engineer was trendy was the thing to do.

I don't see that now.

We talk about proficiency in STEM, but we don't really care much about that in a day to day with our kids and grandkids that we will also change as people see and learn how many opportunities exist.

When I joined the steel industry, I did not know, for example, how many lawyers a steel company employs.

No, I'm talking about direct employment.

I'm not talking about law firms.

I have several here that I use.

Especially I got a litigator like me, so I'm surrounded by lawyers.

So but talk about the house lawyers, things like that.

Yeah, the level of opportunities are immense, but the court business needs skills that I, I will tell you right now, the schools in the region are not prepared to.

Do you think a school like Carnegie Mellon that was built supply manpower to the steel industry right now if you talk to of a day they they they go up in UPS so no we are and you do look we are influencers we would like to go TikTok.

Yeah.

So we need to change this mentality because otherwise you are in trouble.

Otherwise you are going to build.

I don't know if there's anybody here, no offense and just trying to be constructive.

If you don't catch up, you're going to be left behind because manufacture is coming back.

The kids will start to try to be part of it.

And if you don't prepare yourselves, you're going to be left out of the conversation.

Right.

Next question.

Thanks so much for coming to the city club.

I'm going to give you one technical steel question that I think that I think will appeal to your romantic Brazilian background.

Here it is.

You are the head of a iconic industry with deep historical roots in Cleveland, in the United States.

When you're leaving your offices, when you're leaving your plant in Cleveland late at night and walking by your blast furnaces and maybe walking by the piles of taconite from your mines.

Do you see the ghosts of your predecessors?

Do you see Ford or Carnegie?

And if so, what do they ask you?

Or what do you want to ask them?

Oh, look, it's a great question and I do.

And I am a guy that really I'm a long term type of guy.

I believe what Andrew Carnegie J.P. Morgan put together in 1901 was really a moment of truth for this country when they they merged three still small steel companies in a single conglomerate and called the United States to cooperation.

It was the same thing that the matters did in 1847 when they merged two small companies to create Cleveland-cliffs.

And there was the beginning of the United States that we all learned to love.

And then things changed after World War Two, we believed that the world was divided to the United States and the Soviet Union.

All the rest would play a quietly, and nobody would ever be able to rise to prominence to hurt us.

So we lost track of ourselves.

So everything that's happening now, the good, the bad and the ugly, we our fingerprints are all over.

And if you are a Democrat you are going to to to blame Trump.

If you are a Republican, we're going to we're going to blame Obama for older republic and we're going to blame Clinton.

And you keep going back.

But at the end of the day, the country, the people lost track of themselves.

And then in the last few years, we decide that the exception to the rule, everything that's marginal is should be discussed and should be addressed, has to become mainstream.

And we are going to discuss teams that are not relevant to the main community and forget about what really is.

We are going to see homeless people and we ignored who said It's not my problem and you keep going and the more you go, the more the problem will grow, grow, grow, grow, grow and get to a point to get to a point like Brazil.

When I came, I was 39 years old and I knew that this country was the best of the best in the world.

Because my last accomplishment in Brazil was to introduce Brazilian steel is 65 countries.

If I ask any people here in the room just to list the names of 65 countries, I promise you I'm going to You are really good in geography.

You're going to get to 50.

I visit every one of them.

I sold the steel to each one of them, and I knew the names of these two guys on each one of them.

So that's how I learned that the hard way that the United States is the best country in the world.

And I said, That's the place I'm going to raise my my kids.

That's the place that I'm going to have grandkids.

And we need to perpetuate this.

So, see, the United States is slightly off track.

It's a big thing for me because now I have my son is here, my daughter is here, my grandson was born in Cleveland.

And I'm going to have more grandkids.

Right.

Danielle?

So we are.

We are will we need to continue to do this for ourselves.

We can't allow this thing to go off track.

So having the opportunities at this stage of my life to be able to bring back men to help President Trump and the Trump administration, to bring back a manufactory in steel, to support, to being the foundation of what's good in this country is a unique opportunity.

We're not going to miss that.

Okay.

We have our next question over here by text.

Another text question, Can you delve into tariffs more?

Are there differential impacts on tariffs on China, Japan versus Canada, on U.S. steelmaking, on your automotive customers?

Yeah, my autoworker customers have a problem because they are driven by the last quarter.

So you have automotive clients that forced us into prices that were 50% lower than the price that that was already, my gosh.

So I had to walk away from them.

That's a bad thing.

And long term, they they pay the long term, medium term, they paid the price and now they are in complete disarray.

Others decide that, yeah, it doesn't matter that my end user is not buying electric vehicles.

I have to go to electric vehicles because that's what my stock price up in one day.

I want to be like Tesla.

So every single car manufacturer would like to be Tesla.

I mean, they would like to have the Tesla valuation and the CEO would like to be paid like Elon Musk.

That was their business plan, bad business plan.

Now stuck with billions of dollars in committed investment that they have no idea where to go.

The other thing that they are doing, they are still doing and they are kind of a the switch was turned off.

Let's produce parts in Mexico and then do the assembly in the United States and then do a little more assembly in Mexico.

And then we bring the almost final assembly to the United States, put the tag in the car and call the USA.

We have situations that apart goes back and forth through the border seven times every time, needs to cross a border every time This certificate needs to be translated from English, the Spanish and then the Spanish to English and the English to Spanish again, and transportation back and forth if there's a efficient supply chain.

Oh, my.

My mom was the best supply chain managers in the world because she will always put people and things together.

We don't have any concern about what's going to happen next.

So that's not the way to run a business.

You have to plug the drain, organize the thing.

No more Mexico, no more Canada, no more China for now.

And let's see where things go.

Yeah, you'll be a lot will be a lot of rearrangements in the deck.

Well, we're going to survive.

Do no Norway because we're Americans.

And Americans always find a solution, particularly when we are back on doing things with logic.

And logic says it's a lot easier to produce everything right here using American manpower, selling to the American consumer.

But you are talking about iconic people.

Henry Ford was the guy that invented the SAT off because it was a good, good idea in terms of giving an extra day to his employees to enjoy the car, not because he was a nice guy, but because he would like his employees to buy a car in the first place.

And that's how our business is right now.

So we can't run just to create a quarter that is better because the courses are lower, better because costs are lower, better.

It's like trying to teach a horse to eat less.

You skip a day and then the horse is still alive.

Then you skip two days or you feed your horse on Monday, then on Thursday and the horse do it.

Like one day we'll get horses dead.

So I'm glad we stopped that before the horse is dead.

we were sold.

This idea through the decades about the USA is going to eventually be more of a service economy and we're starting to learn now.

We were always supposed to be an everything economy, certainly a manufacturing economy.

So I want to thank you for your commitment to our city and to our country in that sense.

Thank you.

Definitely.

And you mentioned earlier that there's this idea of short term profit motives of corporations, Wall Street and then the politicians who get campaign contributions from them.

So that drives policy.

How do we contend with this national security concept being a manufacturing everything economy and this idea that these corporations and Wall Street are paying our politicians to make policies based on their needs, we need to continue to expose their failures, you know, declare us junior points to Saga NIPOST.

You would not be here if not for American banks that were giving bad advice.

So they believe that they union folks have to eat so that they had to draw a lot of money on debt.

Look, you're going to be fine.

That came from an investment bank, a very reputable name, investment bank, Wall Street bank lawyers that know that they're defending a case that's not kosher or national security.

They should pretend that there is no national security implications.

Keep in mind, the deposit deal was blocked by President Biden.

By the way, if Trump was president, the deal would have been blocked.

He may not in January of 25, but in May of 24, they they gave to undo extensions on their CFE was a review that were completely unnecessary.

But at the end of the day, Biden because he knew that Trump would block decide to block the deal, Biden did the right thing and he act on public information.

He acted on classified information in deep classified information that I don't know.

So law firms that are challenging that very first thing they need to get a run of failure on classified information that was he was they haven't done that because they know if they do, they lose the case.

So these things are hypocrisy.

We need to stop that.

They can make the same amount of money doing the right thing.

So we always have enablers.

Don't forget World War two.

Germany did not invade French.

France only we Germans, lot of French help, so we can't be there.

The Vichy guys, we had the Paris guys.

We had the resistance.

Yeah.

Next question.

First, I wanted to say thank you for your efforts with The Butler works with the Department of Energy negotiations, and you save that plant and the generator plant and wire it.

And so I want to say thank you for that.

My question.

Yeah, my question is, in regards to the U.S. Steel acquisition, if it does end up happening through your company, what would be the fate of the Granite City?

Works in Illinois and the Great Lakes works in downriver Detroit?

Let me start from Butler that you mention, but because just because you brought something that's very dear to me, Butler works is the only plant in the United States producing gray oriented electrical steels.

Being oriented to let go Steel is the only type of steel used in transformers.

Transformers are using every single house, every single pool, every single substation, every single factory, everywhere.

You probably one bed mount transform in front of your home.

If it's not in front of your home, it's in front of your next door neighbor home.

So and in every single pull that that thing that pops when there's a lightning, that's a transformer, there's only one plant in the United States producing the feedstock for that thing.

Butler And Butler was scheduled to be shut down when I acquired the AK Steel.

We had to bring that thing back to us.

A lot of work with Ambassador Bob Lighthizer and President Trump during Trump 1.0, and we saved Butler.

Now we are building a transformer plant in Weirton.

You will to West Virginia because we want to produce the feedstock and produced the real deal to transform because the only one plant producing feedstock, the lead times for transformers in this country are off the charts, right Brian?

There you go.

So we're going to shorten that.

So that's what you are doing over there.

So there's a lot of market, there's a lot of opportunity, but you talk about currency, currency to be part of the picture.

We're going to continue to operate currency to not if, but when we get our hands around us.

Steel Great Lakes they destroyed the plant.

Got to see what what what's left of it there.

I haven't even visited the site.

It would be a sad view when I go there with myself and Terry Fedora and Cliff Smith walk the plant.

The window.

Carter, when we walk, walk the plant are going to cry.

But we have been great before we turn things around, so don't worry, we're going to get next question.

Speaking of of Bob Lighthizer, actually, I had a friend who worked for him closely in the in the in the administration the first time around.

And he recommended to me Lighthizer's book, No Trade is Free.

And I just wanted to ask if you've read the book, if you're familiar with the book, what is sort of the importance that the of the ideas that he sets forth to kind of that your your vision for Cleveland and the type of society that that you'd like to see here?

Bob Lighthizer is one of my mentors, one of the guys that I follow and not only know that know the book, but I have a copy that he dedicated to me that thought, you are a great American.

So and people like to introduce me, say, Oh, he was Brazilian born CEO.

Yeah, I'm not my fault.

So I didn't choose to be born there.

But anyway, so Bob Lighthizer and I were friends.

We talk a lot.

He's still deeply involved.

President Trump calls him for advice and he is very influential and read the book.

No trade is Free.

There's no free trade in the world.

Everything comes with the long, extensive and very expensive bill to be paid.

And guess the biggest pair of bills in the world, the United States.

We pay for things that Americans have no idea.

And that's what is being fixed right now.

It needs to be fixed.

So but that's too blunt.

Yes, we need that right now.

I don't know if we're going to need that in four years or eight years, but we need right now and we have people there, a new generation of politics.

That's the politicians that's coming that they learned from this.

Guys that are in power right now, like Lighthizer, even though he's not a cabinet member, he's in power and several others.

And they will do better.

And that's what the evolution is about.

You learn, you fix what you don't like, you improve what you like, and then you get better in better and better.

And that's what's happening right now.

So don't get distract for the rhetoric, the dodge this stuff like okay, this also U.P.S.

like the we've they're very soon not going to have any snow we're going to be able to walk here freely with no problem.

But right now we're still in the winter.

No tread free.

Take a look.

Great book.

Thank you very much to Lorenzo Gonsalves and Bijou Shaw for joining us at the City Club.

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