Here, local congressional Democrats and Republicans have joined forces in both the U.S. Senate and the House, in both Pennsylvania and Ohio (and elsewhere), to halt a Biden Department of Energy rule that would force any business manufacturing electric distribution transformers to stop using grain-oriented steel cores and instead use amorphous metal.

The grain-oriented cores are used only by one company in the entirety of the United States, namely here at the Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works. A rule outlawing use of those cores would cost more than 1,500 jobs here in Butler and at the company’s other plant in Zanesville, Ohio, changing the lives and security of not just the people who work here but the thousands of other jobs and small businesses that support the plant. ...

The replacement the DOE is insisting on, amorphous steel, is produced here only in a limited supply. This means we would have to rely on imports from China, Japan, and Vietnam to supply the steel for American energy needs. The supply chain for the already vulnerable U.S. electric grid, and thus national security, could be endangered by relying so heavily on imports from the other side of the planet, especially from a hostile power such as China.