Smoke billows from chimneys as factories churn in South Korea’s steelmaking heartland, now underneath menace from Washington’s swingeing new tariffs on the port metropolis’s largest export.
Town of Pohang on South Korea’s east coast for many years pumped out the metal that fuelled the nation’s breakneck financial rise.
South Korea was the fourth largest exporter of the steel to the USA final 12 months, accounting for 13% of its complete metal imports.
However the business has confronted intense pressure lately from overseas competitors.
And companies, officers and employees within the metropolis now worry a deliberate 25% tariff on all metal imports to the USA starting subsequent month may have devastating impacts – and main knock-on results on South Korea’s economic system.
“The metal business is a crucial nationwide business that serves as a elementary materials for key sectors comparable to building, automotive and shipbuilding,” Pohang’s mayor Lee Kang-deok informed AFP.
“If the metal business collapses, your entire South Korean economic system can be destabilised,” Mr. Lee warned.
“If we fail to reply successfully to President Trump’s tariff measures, our nation’s economic system may face a fair better shock, resulting in an irreversible scenario,” he stated.
‘Metal metropolis’
Mendacity round 270 km (168 miles) southeast of Seoul, Pohang has carved out a uncommon place as a key industrial hub in a rustic beset by deepening regional inequality – and the place most sources are tightly concentrated within the capital.
It’s dwelling to the nation’s prime steelmaker, POSCO, a serious power in South Korea’s industrialisation and growth as an export powerhouse, alongside giants like Hyundai Metal and Dongkuk Metal.
“Pohang has lengthy been a symbolic metal metropolis that has supported South Korea for many years, serving as a spine for the nation’s growth,” stated Bang Sung-jun, a former Hyundai Metal employee and an official on the Korean Metallic Employees’ Union’s Pohang department.
“The metal business has supplied high quality jobs and sustained the native economic system,” he informed AFP, whereas acknowledging the air pollution produced and the usually harmful circumstances for employees within the business.
How these employees reply to the present disaster, he added, “will decide whether or not town of Pohang can maintain its metal business, placing its very survival at stake”.
‘Important’ influence
South Korea’s metal business has confronted intense stress lately because it grapples with oversupply – notably from China – and a lower in international demand.
The U.S. tariffs are more likely to intensify these challenges, and analysts warn that ought to low cost Chinese language metal barred from the U.S. market start to flood areas like Southeast Asia and Europe, South Korean metal producers will face deepening value competitors.
“Trump’s protectionism actually will have an effect on South Korea’s long-suffering metal business, already squeezed by low-price exports from China and unfavourable Japanese yen change fee,” Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korea research on the College of Oslo, informed AFP.
“The influence can be important,” he stated.
Some counsel the tariffs may provide alternatives for South Korean companies to search out new export markets.
However for employees in Pohang, the place a number of mills have already shut down, job safety and the specter of additional layoffs overshadow any potential advantages.
AFP reporters visited a manufacturing unit owned by Hyundai Metal which closed late final 12 months. It didn’t look like working and was guarded by a handful of employees on the time of the go to.
Journalists noticed indicators hung by unionised employees criticising the administration and demanding an apology, and thru an open door, what regarded like particles piled up inside.
“For us employees, it has at all times been a disaster with none alternatives,” stated Mr. Bang, the unionist.
Employee Lee Woo-man, who has labored as a subcontractor for POSCO for twenty years, informed AFP that 20 of his colleagues have misplaced their jobs previously 12 months.
He anticipated employment within the metropolis to “lower much more” over the following 4 years and believes Mr. Trump’s tariffs will velocity up the decline of town, which he stated has misplaced the vibrancy it had when he was younger.
Mr. Lee stated he grew up watching the smoke rise from the chimneys of large mills, pondering to himself: “POSCO is feeding Pohang”.
However now that view makes him fear.
“I do not know when this may all collapse.”
Printed – February 17, 2025 10:32 am IST
