During the company's first-quarter earnings call, Goncalves said imported metals are now structurally more expensive due to transportation costs, energy volatility, and geopolitical risk, all factors working in the favor of domestic steel producers. 

"Nowhere is that more evident than in aluminum," Goncalves said. "The aluminum industry has been hit repeatedly — fires, power shortages, curtailments, geopolitical disruption — and customers have taken notice of all that. Automotive OEMs are prioritizing supply certainty, total cost and safety. Our Cliffs steel delivers all of that without the fragility embedded in aluminum supply chains," Goncalves said. 

"In my long career in this business, I have never seen so much momentum in substituting aluminum with steel," he added.  

Cliffs has been active in promoting steel as an aluminum substitute and last year announced a successful trial in which an automotive OEM successfully stamped steel parts on equipment original designed for aluminum. 

Goncalves said it’s not only automotive consumers who are rethinking aluminum.

“Building products, appliances and truck and trailer sectors have been recently gravitating toward more steel use as well,” he said.

Also during the call, Goncalves teased a plan to apply AI to certain aspects of Cliffs' operations, particularly its  production planning and order entry processes.

“Our people are good, but it's impossible to perfect these processes with humans running Excel spreadsheets,” Goncalves said. “This initiative will ultimately move us from human experience-driven planning toward a new and enhanced AI-assisted decision-making system that scales with the complexity of our operations.”

Goncalves said the company plans to detail the partnership in a full announcement in the next few weeks.