President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

It rolls out of a lot of places in these here United States. In fact, up until VERY recently (i.e., 2020), U.S. steel production was larger than that of China.

 

He'll be out. He's going to do a rally and open his 2024 campaign (and fundraising for it) in a time slot that competes with Biden's inauguration.

 

Please, show your work.

 

Plants in America used old manufacturing techniques and high priced union labor. Plants in Japan and China used modern mills and technology that needed fewer, cheaper laborers and produced better quality steel cheaper. The fact that they could ship it halfway around the world and still beat U.S. Steel on price tells you just how much cheaper it was to produce. *edit* There are also arguments to be made about government subsidies and dumping product here.

I remember being a kid in Atlanta. There was a family we were close to who moved to Birmingham. When we drove over to visit them, the sky would visibly begin to turn brown about halfway to B'ham. I don't miss the steel industry here, medical has been a very good replacement for Birmingham - but if you want those jobs at something more than the cafeteria and patient transport levels, you have to get an education.

 

Sixty seconds on Google can be your friend... if you like being anywhere in the time zone of accuracy.

https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/j...f513/World%20Steel%20in%20Figures%202020i.pdf

 

EDIT: I denounce myself. I didn't see the scale differential in the image.

A lot of steel is still produced in the U.S. though.

 

The best thing about steel production over the last 10 years is all the pillbillies took the junk cars in their yards in for recycling. We had at least two mobile cash for cars recycling setups as well as the two regular permanent places. It cleaned the county up nicely.

 

Imports to some extent are a whipping boy. Other factors lead to the decline of steel making in traditional centers like Pittsburgh, Gary and Birmingham.

One factor is that the demand for steel in the United States has not increased very much after about 1972. In the early 70's oil prices soared and steel consumers, especially auto manufacturers, moved to using lighter materials wherever they could such as plastics and aluminum. So as steel plants became more productive and required fewer people jobs disappeared because market demand was flat.

A second factor was that starting in the mid 60's companies such as Nucor, which is now the largest U.S. steel producer, started using electric arc furnaces to melt scrap steel at "mini-mills". These mini-mills did not require the enormous capital investments of the older, larger mills. The mini-mill operators also used cheaper non-union labor. The result was that they ran a lot of larger, legacy mills out of business.

 

This looks like it will be useful.

 

No cash? No Fucks!