We do allow competition. Hence all the US Steel companies which went under in Chapter 11 (and your negative growth of 3 million tons to over an 8-year stretch...take a look though at what we made in WW-II), and some managed to reorganize and shed their pensions and recapitalize, came out stronger than even the Spanish mills.
According to the phoney free traders who spew out disinformation here...the US has been becoming richer, and richer, and richer and richer still from all of this outsourcing. Do you believe that? So we should have LOTs of capital for reinvestment in our steel capacity. BTW, you DO know that our minimills are the predominant source of steel production in the US today...and are almost all sans-union?
And under GATT,WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA now we preferentially tax ONLY US-only production, and let foreign production in free of charge. THAT's a sure-fire formula for success!
LOL! As Ronald Reagan always pointed out, anything you tax you're going to get less of, and what you don't tax, you're going to get more. The discriminatory tax advantage of the importers has to be addressed.
Phoney Free traders are so lame. We are in a war of societies. The importer-special interests are attempting to pit global third world impoverished classes against our blue collar class, and they aren't stopping there, they are trying to pit it against the American middle class as well. Adam Smith, Hume and Ricardo always said that labor was every where of equal value...and the relative wealth of societies and the frictional impediment of distance made for a differing value in that base labor. The internet and super-cheap bulk freight transport have made distance of almost no consequence to many items of labor. Hence, the American worker and Middle class is now in an un-asked for WAR. A war that was very predictable. A war for our very economic future.
And you're on the wrong side. You claim: My family in Ohio and PA are fine
They surely won't be for long if we were to totally blow off our immigration laws as you appear to be panting after with this line...If we allowed competetion and guest workers (2 million of the 6 million steel workers of this country would be Mexican)
The whole basis for that is to lower America's wages. Wage deflation is never pretty, and it won't stop at the Mexican's. Look at Northwest Airlines today demanding their mechanics take a 30% pay cut. How would you like a 30% pay cut? Or 50%? Or 90%? Where does it end? You must know that the Chinese communist government has so tilted the playing field to artificially make their labor the cheapest on the entire planet by severals orders of magnitude. And they only play at allowing capitalism, as Deng Xiaoping always said to his fellow hardliners: "What does it matter whether you call the cat black or white, so long as it catches mice."
That is the global "base" now. They are sucking in capitalist mice's investment of capital, technology, and know-how, at a torrential clip into their black hole. The money goes in, it doesn't come back out. No one dares repatriate the major industrial FDI capital (ever wonder why?)...so where are all the great profits? They are still an unreconstructed communist regime, and the major investors know that repatriation won't be allowed. These FDI-hostages make noises about paying capital gains taxes back here (and that is truly a tax to get rid of). But that isn't the sole or even major reason. There is a whole host of reasons. Not the least of which is the continuing disparity...on paper...in the marginal utility of the investment. But that paper calculation must be called into question by the fact that the PRC would likely nationalize and put a halt to any significant repatriation of FDI...they have deliberately made it easy to do so requiring all FDI to be partnered "50%" with a chinese company. This immediately represented a watering down, a dilution by almost 50% of any FDI into China.
China's rise is Only because we allowed it, and let them into the "game," forcing everyone to have to go Chinese in order to stay competitive. This competition is all by Chinese Governmental design. It is not an unseen hand. They have 400,000-to-600,000 people in the U.S. at anyone time...constantly preaching that WE practice the phoney free trade...while they get to have huge tariffs and subsidies...as if they needed them with their communist government dictating what gets imported. Their government almost universally controls the purse-strings. Read their Constitution.
Who is the sucker here? The U.S. populace is for letting themselves be lied to without doing a reality-check...and not stringing up the liars. We used to tar and feather rascals in the U.S. Looks like we lost a valuable social "brake" on the predations of fast-talking varmints "con-men" and traitors here when we got too "civilized" for our own good...and ceased practicing such colonial justice.