Algoma Steel CEO Michael Garcia says tariffs imposed by the United States have effectively “closed off” the U.S. market, forcing the painful layoffs of 1,000 employees. “Yesterday was an incredibly difficult day for Algoma Steel and for Sault Ste. Marie — most of all for the workers and their families who received a four-month notice,” Garcia said in a statement. “Their stability and well-being remain foremost in our minds.” Access to the U.S. market was “shattered six months ago” when U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 50 per cent tariffs on steel imports, he said. The decision meant “effectively closing off a market that has been essential to our viability for generations and rendering traditional blast-furnace steelmaking no longer viable,” Garcia continued. “This sudden loss of access forced a fundamental shift in our competitive reality. Algoma’s response is not simply to ‘pivot,’ but to accelerate a strategy that has been years in the making: transforming Algoma into a lower-cost, more flexible and more resilient steelmaker built for the future of the Canadian market.” While job cuts were inevitable, the tariffs forced the company to accelerate the transition and “close our blast furnace and coke-making operations in early 2026, one year earlier than we had anticipated or planned,” Garcia said. Without the $500 million from the federal and provincial governments, he said the cuts would have come much earlier. “As we accelerate this transformation, government partnership will continue to play a vital role in ensuring the pivot strategy succeeds,” he said. “A strong Canadian steel industry requires a strong Canadian market — and recent actions by both the federal and provincial governments are helping build exactly that.” Garcia said ‘buy Canadian’ policies are essential to the long-term success at Algoma as businesses adapt to the reality of high U.S. tariffs. “Transportation subsidies that offset the cost of shipping steel across this vast country are helping level the playing field for domestic producers, enabling Canadian-made steel to reach customers from coast to coast,” he said. Trade protections and anti-dumping measures “form the backbone of a fair market where Canadian producers can compete based on quality, cost and innovation. “With this foundation — and with the continued backing of the prime minister, the premier, their governments, and our dedicated workforce — I am confident that Algoma Steel will not only endure but lead in the next era of Canadian steelmaking.” Union wants retraining In an interview with CTV News on Tuesday morning, United Steelworkers Local 2251 President Mike Da Prat said his members are upset and concerned about the layoffs. While the union knew that job cuts were coming, the Steelworkers negotiated a mitigation strategy to help workers transition, especially job retraining. But now workers are being let go in March without that strategy being implemented, Da Prat said. “The company is now saying, through lawyers and arbitration, that the. Mitigation strategies expired on July 31, 2025, and yet, and that is simply not correct,” he said. “So the government let us down in the sense that there was funding provided without any conditions and the condition should have been that there had to be mitigation strategies and some of the strategies were retraining.” RELATED STORIES:
