Pretty much right --we make more steel now than when Reagan was president. Sure, it takes a lot less labor but that's good.
Posted on 08/07/2016 7:49:30 AM PDT by expat_panama
In the public imagination, no industry better symbolizes the downfall of U.S. manufacturing than steel. Shuttered plants dot the Midwest. Since 1973, steel employment has dropped 76%, from 610,700 to 147,300 in 2015. Moreover, the culprit seems clear -- trade -- and its influence seems pervasive: Manufacturing as a whole lost about 5 million jobs from 2000 to 2015. No wonder both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have jumped on the anti-globalization bandwagon.
Globalization seems guilty as charged -- except that the popular indictment is wildly misleading.
Though trade has helped reshape U.S. manufacturing, it is only one force of many. The appeal of making it the prime villain is political and psychological...
...U.S. steel production is roughly where it's been for decades...
...There are now two dominant ways of making steel.
The traditional way is to start from scratch: Iron ore...
Mini-mills are the second way...
...Better manufacturing methods and technologies mean that fewer workers can produce the same output.
This is a good thing, even if it initially involves fewer jobs, because higher productivity promotes higher living standards. "Compared to other high-income economies (that is: excluding China)," writes economist Marc Levinson of the Congressional Research Service in a report, the "United States has performed well in manufacturing. ... From 1990 through 2014, the only high-income countries with faster growth (were) a handful of smaller economies, including Finland, Israel and Sweden."
We are being fed a largely false narrative on globalization. It is not the source of most of our problems. All dynamic economies experience constant disruptions from changing technologies, shifting consumer tastes and inevitable business cycles. Some instabilities come from abroad; most -- for the U.S. -- originate at home. What matters is the economy's ability to offset losses with new jobs and opportunities. That's the ultimate test.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Pretty much right --we make more steel now than when Reagan was president. Sure, it takes a lot less labor but that's good.
BMW moves forward with new plant in Mexico
United Technologies Profits From Moving Its Carrier Unit to Mexico; Sorry, Donald Trump
Yeah if you compare it to the 1970's steel is down 40%. LOL!
Trade is a two-edged sword. Back in the 60’s, the unions charged Japan with dumping steel here at less than cost, with the Japanese gov’t making up the difference. They wanted import taxes and quotas put in place. If true, we should have bought all of the cheap steel we could until we put financial pressure on Japan. The result would have been lower prices for goods from cars to toasters...anything that used steel.
What the unions really wanted was to protect union jobs and were asking the US consumer to pay higher prices to support those jobs. The crappy thing about import taxes is that prices remain high to consumers, but the gov’t gets a windfall profit for doing nothing. The end result is that US consumers protected an inefficient industry that was continuing to use 1890’s labor-intensive technology while Japan, having it’s steel plants bombed into the Stone Age during WWII, were using the latest, more efficient, technology.
Today the steel industry has updated its plants and is starting to be competitive. The fact that there are fewer steel workers is partly because the unions demanded, and often got, large wage increases. So your choice is higher steel prices to subsidize the union, or lower prices and force modernization. Your choice.
Except for the fact that the population today is about 43% larger than 1980.
(227 million in 1989 vs. 325 nillion est, in 2016)
So if steel production was about 10,000 tons in 1980 it should be about 14,000 tons today to keep up with the population growth, all other factors remaining equal.
If production was about 8,000 tons in 1984 it should about 11,500 tons today.
No matter how you look at it or what you use for base year, steel production per capita has fallen by a large amount.
Even China is having trouble with over-capacity in steel production. Their solution is to take a page out of US history and consolidate all the steel companies into two large corporations, one each in the north and south, and then make cuts from there.
With a command economy, you can do that. They are going to get rid of the smaller, more “independent” companies in favor of ones that will be more easily controlled.
Everybody’s OK with it until they lose their job to cheap overseas labor. Humans are a selfish lot.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. In their totality and in their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat with demands the solidarity of all peoples. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap about which we have already warned namely mistaking systems for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
“The First Global Revolution”, A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome by Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider 1991.
“We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent.”
Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, 1950
“The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down...but in the end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault.”
CFR member Richard Gardner, writing in the April 1974 issue of the CFR’s journal, Foreign Affairs.
“Sure, it takes a lot less labor but that’s good.”
That sentiment is repulsive.
Only half story, if that. What about the amount of steel being used in the US "for decades"? Has that stayed the same? Using the same amount now as in 1970?
Stats they never give us:
1. Total of a product being consumed in the US now and in past decades.
2. Percent of the total consumed produced in the US and imported from other nations now and in past decades.
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
“Sure, it takes a lot less labor but that’s good.”
“That sentiment is repulsive.”
No more repulsive than hiring thousands to dig a ditch with spoons and calling it a “jobs program.” A similar thing has happened to Agriculture in which fewer farmers are producing the same, if not more crops than the US did in previous decades.
So, what would have happened if we had outsourced our steel production to Japan in the 1920s when we were still friends?
That’s the part of globalization that these analysts fail to consider.
You don't seem to know because you're not saying. No prob, there are lots of things I don't know and my bet is that there are plenty of things you don't know besides historic U.S. steel consumption. What we do know is that all this talk about how the U.S. doesn't make any more steel is a crock. Reality is that we make more steel now than we did when Reagan was president.
We can learn something new every day.
That sentiment is repulsive.
Huh, you believe that getting the same amount done should always take at least the same amount work than the last time? You're never looking for an easier/faster/better way? Yowsah, talk about "repulsive sentiments"...
That probably wouldn’t happen because of the resource base here. For example, we import that vast majority of our coffee because the resource bases are different. If you had a gov’t that was more friendly in terms of issuing permits, leases, etc., industry would flourish here, including steel. The ore in MN, the coal in WV and PA, simply make it possible to compete provided the technology is implemented. Distribution costs from Japan aren’t trivial, plus Japan has to import most of its raw materials (e.g., ore, coal, etc.). Lower business taxes here and ease up a bit on permits and you’d see a rush of Pacific Rim countries into the US that would make your head swim. Gov’t policies have kept that from happening and high unemployment/underemployment is the result.
Well in the modern day, substitute China for Japan.
Agreed.
I don't seem to know from the article you posted because it is not provided. What is provided is only part of a picture that can only be fairly presented if we look at the total steel used in the US, total produced in the US and total imported from foreign countries, and those stats over several decades up to the present. Not even to mention the effect of population growth and increased demand for products containing steel.
Anyone who throws out a figure such as total steel produced in the US over many decades and acts as if that proves anything is either very ill informed, or they are trying to hoodlink people they hope are very ill informed.
This article was written to try and debunk criticisms of globalization and its negative impact on the US economy and US citizens. For anyone with a modest understanding of the many factors that affect steel use and production, Samuelson failed spectacularly.
It would be very informative if stats were readily available that told us of all manufactured goods consumed in the US, what percentage were produced in the US and what percentage were imported- now and over several decades. Same for major materials such as steel. Same for major finished goods such as autos and electronics, etc. But those stats are not readily available that I know of. I don't hear such stats presented by the business news networks and publications.
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