It's thinking like yours and Toomey's that's the reason the steel mills are closed and bulldozed. I wonder how many underemployed folks in PA would've loved to still be working in the mill?
I know my uncle would.
These tariffs are a perfect example of what drives business leaders to make decisions about their companies. In this case, what makes the tariffs so idiotic is that they are imposed on raw materials like steel and aluminum, but not finished products like cars and aircraft parts.
Imposing tariffs on raw materials without having any tariffs on finished products gives a U.S. manufacturer a huge incentive to produce its steel-based and aluminum-based products outside the country. When you put a tariff on Canadian steel, for example, a company like Ford can save a lot of money by simply producing cars in Canada instead of the U.S. The raw steel has a tariff on it, while the steel in the car does not.
So in this scenario, the U.S. not only doesn't produce the steel ... it doesn't produce the cars made out of steel, either.
The quality of the video isn't great -- it looks like it was originally recorded on a VHS tape, then converted to digital format.
It does a good job of describing all of the things that led to the collapse of the company in 2001. It's very even-handed in its criticism. The company fell apart because it was mismanaged into oblivion, and there's plenty of blame to spread around -- management, labor, and even government. The 1959 nationwide steelworkers strike was the beginning of the end for the entire industry.
There are some interesting bits of information they present shortly after the 30:55 mark:
1. In 1957 the company employed 165,000 people in the U.S. and produced 23 million tons of steel. That's the production level for the entire company. At that time the company had 10 plants, 13 fabricating mills, and 10 shipyards.
2. Compare that to one of the most modern steel mills in the U.S. right now: the Calverton, Alabama mill that was constructed around 2010 and is jointly owned by foreign steel giants ArcelorMittal (Great Britain) and Nippon Steel (Japan). That one plant alone employs 1,600 people and has the capacity to produce more than 5 million tons annually all by itself.
"Free trade" didn't destroy the steel industry in Pennsylvania. Modern technology and advanced steel production methods made those mills obsolete.