Steel company JSW USA to add 1,000 new jobs: CEO

Finance news

JSW Steel USA is investing $1 billion in facilities in Mingo Junction, Ohio, and Baytown, Texas, President and CEO John Hritz told CNBC.

“We are going to be hiring over 1,000 people,” Hritz said on “Closing Bell” on Thursday.

The U.S. steel mill, headquartered outside Houston, produces hot-rolled plates and pipes. The capital expansion projects will introduce new manufacturing technology and create “many, many high-tech jobs,” Hritz said.

He credits President Donald Trump’s steel tariffs for enabling his company to expand.

We are completely in lockstep with the president,” Hritz said. “Completely in lockstep with the administration.”

In March, Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on steel products and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum.

“The whole idea of melt and manufacture, where this country is going, with regard to our ability … to supply defense, to supply infrastructure with heavy plate, to bring up the Mingo Junction facility, and to [improve] a community that was really decimated … all of this makes great sense,” Hritz said. “We would not have this capital from our parent company if they didn’t believe it.”

JSW USA is part of parent company JSW Group, an $11 billion multinational conglomerate based in India, with businesses in South America and Africa in addition to the U.S. The more than 40,000 employees around the globe work in sectors such as steel, energy, infrastructure, cement and sports.

And Hritz isn’t worried about competition among other U.S. steel manufacturers.

“We will be the highest-technology, lowest-cost entity of its kind … in all of North America,” he said. “We’ll pick the markets we want.”