I'm John Kennedy, President and CEO, from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Michigan, interestingly enough, has a ratio of steel consuming to steel producing jobs of 68 to one.
Autocam is a world leader in the manufacture of tight tolerance metal components for applications such as fuel injection systems, braking systems, and power steering systems. Stainless steel bar is one of the primary inputs into our production process. I know of six manufactures of stainless steel bar in the U.S. and we have tried all six, but have only found CARTAC as being capable of providing steel to meet our stringent quality specifications.
We currently import less than 20 percent of our steel purchases from outside the country. In all cases, we try to source CARTAC for even these purchases; but due to quality or proprietary specifications, we have not been able to source this in North America. This proposed action of quotas and tariff protection would be devastating to our company and our 600 U.S. associates.
We have little competition in North America for our machine parts. We have significant competition from Europe and Japan. This action will only further the monopoly CARTAC has for stainless steel bar and force us to move our flanking operations overseas, where we can buy our steel for 50 percent of CARTAC's current prices. This will certainly cost our company up to 200 jobs in the U.S.
In addition, if the quota suggested by the steel producing industry is implemented, 20 percent of our product may have to be produced outside of the U.S., as well, because it will be questionable as to whether the steel we currently buy outside the U.S. today will be available when the proposed quota is implemented.
The real tragedy of this action is that the same amount of steel will continue to come into the U.S., just in a different form, and now, we will lose significant steel consuming jobs, as well. I only hope that we stop this proposed action before we lose nine times as many jobs in the steel consuming industries as we could maintain in steel production.
Thank you.