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I agree with the points the article is making. But let us remember, long before Slicko got in, the steel industry was in dire condition in this country. He simply helped hasten a bit more it's total demise, by signing on the the Most Favorable Trading deals with China. This issue with steel and many many other industries that left our shores has been going on for well over twenty years. Guess what folks. What is said here about steel can be said about many commerical electronics and other industries considered quite critical to our countries welfare. Imagine the soon coming day when we will have to depend on China to produce certain critical electronic weapontry for us? Don't laught. China is quickly becoming a bonified competitor in all forms of electronics, which include state of the art Integrated Circuit manufacturing. The day will come when the few remaining IC manufactures in this country can no longer compete with the state owned Chinese firms. These IC companies such as Intel and TI just to name two, will have to be government subsidized to stay in business or just think who we will have to buy our military hardware from?
Can you imagine having to request the Chinese to develop some extremely new generation Digital Signal Processor for instance along with the supposedly secret firmware for a new weapon system we want for our military?
Please don't joke or make stupid un-informed remarks on this issue. Our national security continues to be eroded due to extremly poor decisions in Washington. I cannot for the life of me understand, assuming that our presidents, and congress are truly patriots and only want a truly strong, solvent, and soverign nation, how they continue to allow us to go down the tubes in so many ways.
So what is mentioned in this article about the steel issue can be extended to many other equally critical industries we require to keep our country not only safe but on top of things, military wise as well as from a commerical standpoint. Please don't say things like well hells bells, Raytheon or lets say Northrop can manufacture it's required new and current generation IC's for instance. This is a lame joke at best. Many defense oriented companies used to do that very thing, but dropped IC manufacturing for instance due to the enourmous amount of capital expenditures to both manufacture IC's as well as produce weapon systems.
Please do take my word on this. It is true and anyone that worked for these companies and have a balanced historical view of what has been going on for some forty years will back me up on this point.
We are in more trouble then a lot of folks realize.
As for my verbage, I try to keep it very low tech in nature and terse,as not to confuse the real issue. Point is, things are not to good in Disney Land.

No, I agree with you totally. My father was in the defense industry re: development and design for decades. What you are saying is true.

We can't even put out enough armor for our vehicles right now - what will happen if we ever go to war with China?

Thanks for your post. My husband is a precision/prototype machinist and the state of the industry is in dire times.

I think the only way we could possibly turn this around is a good old-fashioned boycott of ALL products made in China. Now, I'm going to sound like a union rep, but if the consumers in America would take the time to look at where the products they are buying are made, and ONLY bought items made in the U.S. could we possibly turn this around?

My personal experiences are making it harder and harder each day to support the whole "free trade" notion. When I see my husband's company going down the tubes cause they're moving their semi-conductor manufacturing lines to China the word "traitor" comes to mind quite frequently...

MU, and everybody else. If China is the big threat militarily in the future why do they still have MFN status? Especially since they refuse to revalue their currency. This is akin to selling high grade steel and oil to Germany and Japan in the 30's. It makes no sense.