++SOUNDBITES PARTIALLY COVERED BY VIDEO++

Baytown, Texas – 5 June 2018

1. Various exteriors of steel pipe manufacturer Borusan Mannesmann

2. Borusan Mannesmann Pipe US CEO Joel Johnson speaking to employees, camera tilts down to postcard he's holding

3. Reverse shot of CEO before employees

4. Tight on postcard

5. UPSOUND (English) Joel Johnson, CEO Borusan Mannesmann Pipe US speaking about post card they are sending: "And basically it says 'President Trump, Baytown Texas needs your help."

6. Johnson speaking

7. Various of Borusan employees filling out postcards that will be mailed to president, senators, congressman and governor

8. SOUNDBITE (English) Joel Johnson, CEO of Borusan Mannesmann Pipe US:

"We figure it's somewhere between 25 and 35 million (US) dollars a year, which is a huge increase in our costs."

9. Various of employees filling out postcards

10. SOUNDBITE (English) Kerry Washington, Borusan Mannesmann Employee:  

"If it doesn't work we'll just try something else or try again. You know, I think the main focus is the expansion of getting another factory here."

11. Close of employee filling out post card

12. SOUNDBITE (English) Victor Rodriguez, Borusan Mannesmann Employee:  

"I'm hoping we that can get some sort of exemption from it, so."

13. Johnson leading AP on a factory floor tour

14. Pipe being fabricated

15. Various of pipe being curled and sealed in the fabricator

16. Tracking shot outside in the yard as the finished product awaits shipment, coils brought in from other producers to be made into piping

17. Johnson driving golf cart through inventory yard

18. Various of steel coils ready to be made into pipe

19. SOUNDBITE (English) Joel Johnson, CEO of Borusan Mannesmann Pipe US:

(Johnson speaking through noisy two way radio) "That's the killer is uncertainty. There's enough uncertainly in everything else that we do, let alone just political macro uncertainty."

Bay City, Texas – 6 June 2018

20. Various exteriors of the 1.8 billion US dollar Tenaris USA factory

21. Various of seamless pipe fired up until malleable and stretched to desired length

22. Various of solid steel billets, the precursor to finished pipe, awaiting firing and lengthening

23. Various of finished pipe getting treatment

24. SOUNDBITE (English) Luca Zanotti, Tenaris USA:

"And so we are waiting for that to come to a conclusion and we're positive we're gonna get a good conclusion."

25. Various of Zanotti giving AP tour through Tenaris operations

26. Wide of factory floor, shows automation

27. SOUNDBITE (English) Luca Zanotti, Tenaris USA:

"In the end we'll adapt to what the administration is requiring."

Lone Star, Texas – 4 June 2018

28. Exterior of US Steel Tubular Products factory, includes city limits sign

29. Various of idled part of factory viewable from public road

30. Trey Green and Currel Beatty Jr, United Steelworkers Local 4134 speaking

31. SOUNDBITE (English) Trey Green, Vice President, United Steelworkers Local 4134:  

"If we see something as far as labour from the president we'll count us blessed for it, I just don't know that that's his end game."

32. Various exteriors of US Steel plant

33. Reverse angle of plant viewable from the local reservoir

Washington, DC – 29 June 2018

34. Senate hearing featuring testimony of US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, about tariffs

35. Camera pans toward the table at which Ross is sitting

36. SOUNDBITE (English) Wilbur Ross, US Secretary of Commerce:

"Idled steel and aluminum capacity is being restarted as we sit here, in Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Missouri and Kentucky. Several other companies have also announced new investments in these industries in Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri and Texas."

Bay City, Texas – 6 June 2018

37. Various of Tenaris plant, steel billets

Baytown, Texas – 5 June 2018

38. Operations at Borusan plant

Lone Star, Texas – 4 June 2018

39. Wide of Durwin Royal, USW local president during interview

40. SOUNDBITE (English) Durwin Royal, President, United Steelworkers Local 4134:

"That's one of my biggest fears. You put these tariffs, but now you're going to exclude everybody so they're kind of pointless."

Baytown, Texas – 5 June 2018

41. Various of workers filling out postcards

42. SOUNDBITE (English) Joel Johnson, CEO of Borusan Mannesmann Pipe US:

"This area needs more jobs and we're promising if we get this two year exemption to immediately start building a factory either on that green grass we got over there or right alongside here."

43. Various of pipe being fired

44. Various of workers on factory floor

Steel companies in the US are worried that President Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminium will ultimately affect American workers.

Joel Johnson examines the shipping labels on 35-ton coils of American-made steel that will be unspooled, bent and welded into rounded sections of pipe.

One's from Nucor, a mill in Arkansas. Another's from Steel Dynamics in Mississippi. But much harder to spot in the sprawling factory yard is the imported steel that's put his company in the crosshairs of Trump's bitter trade dispute with America's allies and adversaries.

Trump says his tariffs on steel, aluminum and other goods will put US companies and workers on stronger footing by winding back the clock of globalisation with protectionist trade policies.

But the steel tariff — essentially a 25 percent tax — may backfire on the very people the president is aiming to help.

The Commerce Department has been deluged with requests from 20,000 companies seeking exemptions.

Johnson is the CEO of Borusan Mannesmann Pipe US, a company with Turkish roots that manufactures the welded pipe used by energy companies to pull oil and natural gas out of the earth.

He has been fighting an uphill battle to get a two-year exemption from Trump's tariff on steel imports.

Without a waiver, Johnson said, Borusan faces levies of up to 30 million US dollars a year — a staggering sum for a business with plans to expand.

"We don't have any proof we're being heard," Johnson said.

Eighty miles southwest, in Bay City, global steel giant Tenaris also is seeking an exemption from the tariffs. The company churns out steel pipe in a 1.8 billion US dollar state-of-the-art facility that began operating late last year, using solid rods of steel called billets that are made in its mills in Mexico, Romania, Italy and Argentina.

Of the four, only Argentina has agreed to limit steel shipments to the US in exchange for being spared the tariff.

"The decision is out of our hands," said Luca Zanotti, president of Tenaris's US operations, while expressing confidence its request would be approved. If it's not? "We'll adapt," he said.

Steelworkers, meanwhile, are cheering the tariff even as they remain sceptical of Trump's pledge to empower blue-collar Americans.

They also worry about the possibility of too many exemptions.

"You put these tariffs (in place) but now you're going to exclude everybody so they're kind of pointless," said Durwin Royal, president of United Steelworkers' Local 4134 in Lone Star, Texas.

The diverse views illustrate the complexity, confusion and concern lurking behind Trump's "America First" pledge.

Pipe mills are numerous in Texas, which leads the country in oil and natural gas production.

Factories that use imported steel typically do so when they can't get the exact type or quantity they need from US producers.

Many of them are among the thousands of companies that have filed exclusion requests to avoid being hit by the steel tariff.

Most of them are in the dark, unsure if their applications will be approved as the Commerce Department struggles to process a dramatically higher number of requests than it expected to receive.

A denial may torpedo plans to expand a factory.

Or a company may have to lay off employees.

The stakes are especially high in Texas: economists Joseph Francois and Laura Baughman have estimated the Trump steel tariff and separate 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum will trigger the loss of more than 40,000 jobs.

There's no playbook to guide companies through an exemption process Johnson described as chaotic and unpredictable.

He's hired a lobbyist, former New York Gov. George Pataki.

He's fending off opposition from competitors, including a Tenaris-owned business, who want Borusan's request denied.

On a sweltering afternoon earlier this month, Johnson assembled dozens of his employees in an air-conditioned room for what amounted to a Hail Mary pass.

After lunching on sandwiches from Chick-fil-A, Borusan workers wrote personal messages on oversized postcards to be sent to Trump and other senior officials in Washington and Austin, the Texas capital, pleading for their help in securing the tariff exemption.

"I don't know what motivates politicians besides votes," Johnson said. "That's why we're doing this crazy exercise."

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UNION BLUE

Royal is in his third term as the president of Local 4134.

He and the local's vice president, Trey Green, are union Democrats in the heart of Trump country.

Lone Star is in Morris County, Texas, where Trump received nearly 70 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Royal and Green initially backed independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders before casting their votes for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Their union hall is a mile and a half from the US Steel factory that manufactures welded pipe made from metal produced in the company's mills in Indiana and Illinois.

Like the union, US Steel backed Trump's tariff, declaring that his action would "level the playing field" by blocking other countries from dumping inexpensive steel in the United States. Much of it comes from China.

Although Royal and Green were heartened by the steel tariff, they said they're under no illusion Trump is a friend to organised labour.

Nor are they convinced his tough talk on trade will lead to a rebuilt US steel industry with more and better jobs.

Echoing Sanders, they called for a broader strategy to prevent corporations from sending American jobs to low-wage countries.

"I don't know that putting tariffs on just one or two particular items are going to be the mainstay that helps us in the future," Green said.

Royal and Green said they're still waiting for Trump to follow through on his pledge to empower working-class Americans that he said were "forgotten" by Washington.

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COST OF DOING BUSINESS

The Tenaris factory is a massive, modern facility just off the highway leading into Bay City, 21 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. About 640 people work here, but only a handful come into direct contact with the 50,000 tons of pipe the 1.2 million-square-foot factory is able to manufacture each month. The process is almost entirely automated, watched over by employees huddled in front of computer screens.

The company manufactures seam-free pipe typically used in offshore energy production or for transporting highly corrosive gas.

Tenaris began construction of the Bay City plant five years ago, long before anyone anticipated an American president would slap a tariff on steel.

Zanotti declined to say how much Tenaris may have to pay, but he downplayed the expense as a cost of doing business on a global scale.

Tenaris operates in 16 countries, including Nigeria, which ranks 145 out of 190 countries on the World Bank's "ease of doing business" index.

"Of course we don't like it," Zanotti said of the tariff.

But, he added, "we're used to dealing with moving parts. This is another moving part."

The company doesn't have a registered lobbyist in Washington, let alone an office. But Tenaris has deep pockets and is in the U.S. for the long haul.

Zanotti said the company has spent 8 billion US dollars over the last decade to expand its foothold in America, a figure he doesn't think the Commerce Department should overlook.

The investment includes the Bay City factory and the acquisition of the Maverick Tube Corporation, based in Houston.

Like Borusan and U.S. Steel, Maverick makes pipe with a welded seam.

"We're positive we're going to get a good conclusion," Zanotti said.

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LET'S MAKE A DEAL

Johnson said he has a proposition for a president who prides himself on being a master dealmaker.

About 60 percent of Borusan's welded pipe is manufactured with American-made steel. The rest is shipped from Turkey already in tube form; it's heat-treated, threaded and inspected in Baytown.

Johnson is proposing that Borusan be allowed to bring in 135,000 tons of Turkish pipe each year for the next two years, tariff-free.

In return, the company will build a new factory, right next to its existing plant.

That's a 75 million US dollar investment that will allow Borusan to hire 170 new employees, augmenting its existing workforce of 267, according to Johnson.

The expanded capacity also will allow Borusan to wean itself from the Turkish imports.

He said he's gotten no reply to his pitch.

The company brought ex-Gov. Pataki, a Republican, on board in March and has paid him 75,000 US dollars to drum up support in Washington.

But Johnson said he's unsure if Pataki's made a difference.

"We're not politicians. We make pipe," he said. "We felt like that was a move we had to make because we are so far out of our element."

Johnson said he had for weeks unsuccessfully sought support from GOP Rep. Brian Babin, whose district includes Baytown. Babin wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Thursday, expressing his strong support for Borusan's request and urging Ross to give it "your highest consideration."

"Finally," Johnson said.

The Commerce Department has been posting the thousands of requests for tariff exemptions online to allow third parties to offer comments and objections — even competitors who have an interest in seeing a rival's request denied.

Several of them, including U.S. Steel and Tenaris-owned Maverick Tube, objected to Borusan's bid, saying the Turkish pipe it imports is readily available from American suppliers.

They added that Turkey has been cited by the Commerce Department for dumping steel pipe in the U.S.

But Johnson said the objections are aimed at undercutting Borusan.

He said no U.S. pipe mill is serious about selling to him because he'd want very detailed information about their products — such as the composition of the steel and a history of customer complaints.

"They just don't want to see another factory go up here," Johnson said. "They don't want to see a competitor grow."