On the eve of Election Day, the owner of AK Steel's Butler Works announced that the Trump administration is taking action against electrical steel imports that threaten the jobs of steelworkers.

The move to impose trade protection would save about 1,400 jobs locally, Ohio-based Cleveland Cliffs Inc., which acquired the AK Holding Corp. in March, said in a news release Monday.

AK Steel mills in Butler and Zanesville, Ohio, are the last U.S. producers of grain-oriented electrical steels. The iron-silicon alloys were developed to provide low core loss and high permeability required for efficient and economical electrical transformers.

Cleveland Cliffs chairman and chief executive officer Lourenco Goncalves in the news release praised President Donald Trump, U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Robert Lighthizer and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross for the decision to implement trade barriers on imported electrical steel under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.

The federal law allows Trump to unilaterally place levies on foreign steel and aluminum to protect national security. The company did not say which specific actions would be taken — or when.

“These actions should be viewed as a condemnation of those seeking to circumvent tariffs and quotas imposed under our trade laws and of companies abusing the steel Section 232 product exclusion process,” Goncalves said.

Trump dropped a hint about his decision during a speech at a campaign rally Saturday at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport in Penn Township.

“We saved 1,400 jobs right here at AK Steel in Butler,” the president said. He added, “I know they're voting for us,” Trump said in reference to himself and U.S. Rep Mike Kelly, R-16th. “We did a great job.”

Kelly, who has pushed for the action, was pleased with the news.

“President Trump came to Butler and promised that he would save the 1,400 jobs at AK Steel,” he said Tuesday. “The statement released by Cleveland-Cliffs and my conversations with the White House indicate that things are moving in the right direction.”

In the past year, the administration launched an investigation into whether the import of electrical steel from foreign countries has threatened national security by circumventing tariffs.

Cleveland-Cliffs has argued that Asian countries are circumventing tariffs on components by routing electrical steel through Mexico and Canada, where minimal processing occurs. The company warned that it would close the Butler Works and Zanesville plants unless loopholes in tariffs were closed.

“It's excellent news for us and it's excellent news for the community,” Jim Panei, president of United Auto Workers Local 3303, which represents plant employees, said Tuesday, “to stop the circumvention of the (steel) that was going into Canada and Mexico and then coming into the United States free of tariffs.”

“It's just a great thing. We fought hard for this.”