Vehicles leave Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., in March. The steelmaker continues to suffer from U.S. tariffs.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Algoma Steel Group Inc. chief executive Rajat Marwah says Canada needs to do more to help the steel sector survive a trade war that has decimated its legacy U.S.-dependent business model.
U.S. President Donald Trump imposed 25-per-cent tariffs on imports of Canadian steel early in 2025, and then doubled the levy to 50 per cent by mid-year. That essentially closed off the American market for steelmakers such as Algoma, which previously relied on the U.S. for about 60 per cent of its revenue.
Speaking at The Globe and Mail’s Intersect 2026 conference in Toronto on Wednesday, Mr. Marwah said that while governments have been “quite active in listening and responding,” more is needed.
From right, Algoma Steel CEO Rajat Marwah speaks at the Intersect conference in Toronto on Wednesday, alongside Dominion Dynamics CEO Eliot Pence, Citibank Canada CEO Raymond Gatcliffe, and EDC CEO Alison Nankivell.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Last year, the federal and provincial governments rolled out multiple initiatives to help the steel industry, including providing hundreds of millions of dollars in direct funding, cracking down on the dumping of foreign steel into Canada and mandating that publicly funded projects use Canadian steel wherever possible.
“That’s not enough as we see it right now,” Mr. Marwah said. “More action needs to be taken, ensuring that ‘Buy Canada’ really sticks, and the policies are really implemented, stopping steel coming from offshore, which is unfairly traded.”
Last September, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.-based Algoma secured $500-million in low-interest federal and provincial loans with the aim to provide it with substantial liquidity to weather a prolonged trade war. Despite the aid, its losses have continued to balloon. The company reported a net loss of $364.7-million in the fourth quarter of last year.
Algoma has been trying to win more business in Canada, particularly in the plate market, where it has a big advantage because it is the only domestic producer.
While Algoma is competing to win more public contracts, particularly in the defence sector, Mr. Marwah said he has concerns that Canada is not moving fast enough to award that business.
“How quickly are we making decisions on procurement, and can we do that sooner to allow the companies who are coming up with ideas to see it into fruition?” he said. “Or it goes into the bureaucracy, the circle where it takes months and months and years.”
Eliot Pence, founder and CEO of defence startup Dominion Dynamics, echoed those comments. Speaking at the same conference, he said that while Prime Minister Mark Carney’s high-level efforts to bolster Canada’s military capabilities are laudable, defence procurement contracts are being awarded to the private sector at a sluggish pace.
He said the challenge is getting bureaucracy and civil servants to push “at the pace of the threat. What you see in the U.S. is an urgency that I haven’t quite seen here.”
Canada was under pressure to increase its defence spending to meet NATO’s benchmark of 2 per cent of gross domestic product, a level that this country had long failed to meet.
Mr. Carney said in March that over the next decade, Canada will unleash half a trillion dollars in defence investment toward the purchase of submarines, military jets, drones, sensors and radar systems.
Algoma is in the running to supply metal for a lucrative submarine contract to be awarded by the federal government. If South Korea’s Hanwha Ocean wins the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project, it plans to source some of its steel from Canada.
Hanwha and Algoma signed a binding memorandum of understanding worth up to US$250-million in January, under which the South Korean shipbuilder said it would contribute US$200-million toward the development of a structural steel beam mill in Sault Ste. Marie. It also said it would potentially purchase as much as US$50-million in steel products from Algoma.
Both are contingent on Hanwha winning the submarine contact. Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems is also vying for the business.
Algoma’s Mr. Marwah said that while the company’s efforts to diversify away from the U.S. are taking shape, fracturing the trade relationship entirely with the superpower isn’t realistic.
“The supply chain between the U.S. and Canada has been built over decades. It cannot just go away within a year or two,” he said. ”It’ll take time, and we will need some kind of trade relations with the U.S., who are our largest partners."