I saw the early post on steel production and was curious. Then saw your post and it reminded me of the homework I had originally wanted to do. With no thoughts of protectionism policy, tariffs, etc. Just thinking to myself “I wonder if we could ramp up and have enough steel to fight a war like WW II?”
I found a long article and too complicated for me at this time of night regarding the steel industry and protectionism from the CATO institute:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbp/tbp-004.pdf
From other sources I found American production of steel for some years:
1939: 51.4 million tons
1946: 66.6 million tons
1998: 102 million tons (near peak)
2011: 95.6 million tons
The CATO article goes into worldwide percentages, etc. which may be a more reasonable approach rather than just raw tons produced to understand our position in world steel production.
However, I was surprised that it seems pretty high - at least to my novice eyes. Some of what the CATO report was pointing out that the press, unions, and politicians talk a lot about the loss of jobs in the steel industry (”U.S. Steel lays off another 5000 workers, etc.) - but a lot of that is due to robots and other means of increased productivity.
Anyway - I was encouraged that we still “make stuff” in the U.S. of A.
1940: 37,400,000 MT
2009: 19,000,000 MT
Which shows how pathetic things are, mostly due to outsourcing. We couldn't win a war of attrition.