Associate Director of Policy and Director of Center of Faith and Opportunity Initiatives visit GTP
Vice President Pence sent his Associate Director of Policy, Drew Horn, and John Pughe, who is the Director for the Center of Faith and Opportunity Initiatives at the US Department of Commerce, on a 2-day visit across rural Pennsylvania. As part of their visits to manufacturers in Wyoming and Bradford County, Mr. Horn and Mr. Pughe along with various delegates from local, state, and federal levels, visited GTP to learn about our operations and offer support with challenges in the American tungsten industry.
Stacy Garrity, Vice President of Government Affairs & Industry Liaison, highlighted two areas where foreign interference impacts the tungsten industry.
The first challenge facing US tungsten smelters is that tariffs were imposed on most Chinese tungsten imports but were left off on tungsten powders. GTP and other U.S. tungsten powder producers have been harmed by unfair trade practices which include upstream supply restrictions, dumping, lower to no environmental standards and intellectual property insecurities. Omitting tariffs on tungsten from the list of items is harmful to the U.S. tungsten production industry and encourages further Chinese activity to distort the domestic tungsten market.
The second challenge is that hundreds of thousands of pounds of tungsten metal powder are being imported from China and used for shielding of nuclear waste. Tungsten was designated as critical to national security by the Department of the Interior.
Recognizing the importance of tungsten to national security, Congress included it in a list of materials that the Department of Defense should not source from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The Department of Energy and other non-DOD government agencies should consider requiring contractors to only use US-made tungsten to help ensure a vibrant and robust domestic U.S. tungsten industry.
Drew Horn (7th from left) and John Pughe (9th from left) were very supportive and committed to assist GTP in addressing these two issues.