Mid-Continent will recover, Blunt tells workers Friday

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. — U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., traveled to Poplar Bluff on Friday morning to visit the employees of Mid-Continent Steel & Wire, the largest nail manufacturer in the country. He returned a letter the local plant employees sent to him when tariffs were placed on the steel they use to manufacture their goods.

Blunt told the employees, state and local leaders, he kept the letter on his desk during the time he was working on winning exclusions from the U.S. government. At the end of his speech, he signed the letter and gave it to the workers.

“Welcome to our family. You fought hard for us,” said Chris Pratt, U.S. operations general manager of Mid-Continent.

While temporary employees were let go and the company lost 60% of its orders, Pratt said, management tried to keep its workers by having them clean and paint equipment. More than 140 of them left to find other work “out of uncertainty,” according to the company.

Blunt said while the local manufacturer’s case was the easiest to make, there were hundreds of cases filed.

Many of the workers who left will come back because of their years’ of service and the company’s benefits, Blunt said. He talked about the country’s strong economy, saying the number of jobs exceeds the number of people looking for jobs.

This part of the county likes to either make or grow things, Blunt said. New manufacturing companies are looking at the cost of utilities and the transportation systems and “both of these are working for us.”

“Location is our biggest asset,” said Blunt, adding once people get jobs here they want to live here. “As competitive as this company is, it will get back to the numbers it was at a year ago. I wanted to come by, thank you for letting me work for you and sign your letter.”

State Sen. Doug Libla and state Rep. Hardy Billington also attended Friday’s meeting.

Mid-Continent officials said in April the U.S. Department of Commerce granted 22 of their 24 requests. Two requests were denied for technical reasons but can be refiled, according to the company, which began announcing layoffs last summer.

“This is a great day for our workers, our customers, for Southeast Missouri, and for U.S. manufacturing,” Pratt said at the time. “We knew from the start that we qualified for the exclusions. Now, we can focus on making Magnum (Nails), the best nails in the world, here in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.”

Pratt added, “We have been making nails all through the nine and a half months it took for our requests to be granted. We can now methodically ramp up production levels, moving toward the growth path we were on before the tariffs went into effect.”

A 25% tariff on steel used to make nails was pricing Mid-Continent out of the market, the company had said.

About 80% of the nails sold in the United States are imports from a variety of countries, predominantly China, company officials said last year, explaining they were able to compete against the imports by sourcing raw material from Mexico.

In its requests, Mid-Continent said U.S. steelmakers could not provide the volume of raw material the manufacturer required.

Doug and David Libla founded Mid-Continent Nail in 1987. The company was purchased in 2012 by Mexico-based Deacero USA.

Daily American Republic staff reports contributed to this article.