First of all, thank you for your leadership. I know steel is very important in your constituency and you've been a great advocate for this. I remember you pushing for this initiative when we were coming up with the support package, and you made it very clear we needed to support our steelworkers. Thank you for your personal leadership on this, Terry.
The first signal we wanted to send is that this is an important sector. There's a lot of innovation occurring in this sector. There are a lot of transformations occurring, and we want to make sure we accelerate that. We want to see more money in research and development. We want to see more money in capital and equipment to make sure our producers have the latest technologies so they can compete in the long run. This was a great opportunity for us to really invest and coinvest with them in some of the major capital projects that would allow the sector to continue to grow and be competitive going forward.
That's really the objective of the strategic innovation fund. It's saying, look, we have your back. We're here to support you. We want to see more jobs. We want to see more R and D. We want to see more capital invested. That's exactly what we had from the ArcelorMittal announcement. Right after that they did a job fair, because they were looking to hire more people. That's a great sign.
We recognize that we have legitimate challenges under section 232 with the tariffs that are still in place by the Americans—the 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum. We don't underestimate the impact that's having on producers. At the same time, these investments send a very powerful and positive signal to our producers that we are supporting them, particularly our workers. These investments will create more jobs and more opportunities, and that bodes well for the long-term success of our steel and aluminum workers.