Steel prices are averaging in the tarriff regime at or below where they were averaged over the several years previous to it - around $300/ton hot rolled sheet, $400/ton cold rolled sheet.
Mr. Bird: It's a near certainty that an unprotected commodity's price will be lower relative to the protected one. That's the whole premise behind protective tariffs.
No, no, no! You've got it all wrong! The premise of tarriffs is to make a relative incentive for domestic investment over investment abroad. It has nothing to do with raising or lowering prices, which are determined by the marketplace demand quite independently of tarriffs. Tarriffs don't set prices or prohibit foreigners from selling their product. Foreigners are welcome to set up domestic plants to employ Americans in a tarriff regime, exactly what we have seen with the Auto import quotas Reagan used. While GM and Ford and Chyrsler have closed plants from lost market share, Toyota and Honda and Hyundai and Mercedes, etc. have opened domestic plants, not increased imports. Remember the goal is to create domestic investment to get Americans high paying manufacturing jobs.
We've got well over a dozen steel producers, none with more than 15% of the domestic market. There is plenty of competition at home that kept prices down under the tarriff regime. That tarriffs allowed a lessening of imports and a greater use of domestic steel, giving producers time and money to restructure and strengthen the industry (i.e. US Steel and ISG mergers).
This isn't like a tarriff on passenger airplanes, which would give Boeing (the only domestic producer) unlimited pricing power up to the level of the tarriff.