Posted on 11/19/2003 2:03:24 PM PST by Willie Green
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:03:14 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Nucor Corp. Chief Executive Dan DiMicco said the U.S. tariffs imposed on foreign steel in March 2002 are necessary to remain competitive and he called reports of a compromise to end the tax "speculation."
Tariffs allowed the U.S. steel industry "to go through the most massive restructuring and organization in the last 50 years and enabled it to get itself into a position where it can be more competitive globally," DiMicco said in a televised interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
|
||||||
|
|
(million metric tons) |
|
(thousands) |
|
(tons/employee) |
|
||||||
Australia |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Austria |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Belgium |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Brazil |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Canada |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Finland |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
France |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Germany |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Italy |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Japan |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Luxembourg |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Netherlands |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
South Korea |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Spain |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
Sweden |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
United Kingdom |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
United States |
|
|
|
|
|
|
U.S. Steelmaking technology, despite being misportayed by the media and globalism advocates, is among the most productive on the planet. Non-union minimill operators, such as Nucor, even achieve productivity levels exceeding 1000 tons/employee. But minimills are primarily scrap recylcers, and the large scale integrated mills that are still necessary to produce steel from ore tend to skew our national average downward compared to some small nations that recycle scrap only.
But the minimills dispense with this added effort when they recycle scrap.
Nothing more than what I have listed.
Looks like my links are slightly out of date.
They still get you back to the website where I sourced my data, but they've apparently rearranged their webpages as they posted newer information.
As I recall, I combined two different lists (one for tonnage, one for employment) to produce my table. I excluded countries (including some old Soviet bloc nations) that only had data on one but not on the other.
But I think it's pretty safe to assume that the antiquated Soviet pollution-belchers were pretty doggone low on the productivity scale.
One of these days, I'll try to dig a little deeper to update these stats.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that they're mostly going after the el-cheapo pollution-belching EASTERN-European mills.
It makes sense. They can afford to buy them cheap and retrofit new technology to boost productivity rather quickly. And although the new-tech may produce "less" pollution, they won't be forced to invest in the extreme enviro-controls that they've had to install here, lowering their ROI.
I don't blame them. I blame Congress for shackling our domestic industry, then undermining it by subjecting it to imports. Had they done that 40~60 years ago, Stalin and Kruschev would have been their biggest chearleaders! It probably would have put a big grin on Mao Tse Tung's face as well.
I wasn't so much interested in productivity but tonnage. It's my understanding that most of the dumping problems are being caused by the Iron Curtain mills.
And if this is the case one wonders why isn't the global warming, ecology-worshiping, "we are the world" crowd trying to close them down.
Well the total tonnage produced still doesn't give any indication where it's being shipped or used.
I could be wrong due to shifting markets, but I'm still under the impression that our dumping concerns are with nations like Brazil, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and China. I'm not sure where former Soviet-bloc steel may be going. The last I heard, we were more affected by their Aluminum smelters undercutting ours. The whole Enron fiasco and Kalifornia power crisis didn't help that situation at all. (Plus Boeing moving a lot of production to China.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.