US steel production in absolute terms has dropped 45% (edit: 31%) from 50 years ago, when we made about 25% of steel globally. Now we produce less than 5% of steel globally. I'd say steel production has largely left the US.
The Wikipedia article shows US production dropping 30% from 1967 to 2015. It's a loss, yes, but 70% of the production is still here. What's changed is that China and other countries are producing much more now, so as a percentage of world-wide production the US has dropped. But that'd be true even if we were producing more domestic steel than before.
With a US population of 225 million in 1979 and 322 million in 2015, that means that total US steel consumption is only 68% of what it was in 1979. It doesn't look like domestic production has declined much (if any) faster than domestic consumption since the end of the 1970s.
Cars are lighter than in the 1970s, cars last longer than in the 1970s, and non-steel materials are increasingly used in roles that steel was used for in the 1970s. Like parts of cars and making beverage cans.
> The Wikipedia article shows US production dropping 30% from 1967 to 2015. It's a loss, yes, but 70% of the production is still here.
Fair, I plugged my number in upside down. The production 50 years ago was ~46% higher than today, or today's is ~31% lower.
> What's changed is that China and other countries are producing much more now, so as a percentage of world-wide production the US has dropped. But that'd be true even if we were producing more domestic steel than before.
Yes, but we've also dropped 30% of our own production. When our absolute production is down this much and our overall share of production has plummeted, I think it's fair to say the industry has largely left. The population is also up by over 50% since 1967, so per capita our steel production has basically been cut in half.
In comparison, the absolute number of consumer electronics that America produces might actually be higher than 50 years ago, but as a share of the market, production has plummeted, to the point that everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US.
When you say "has largely left", that implies that we no longer have companies doing the work, that we've lost the capability to do the work. That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not based on these figures.
If we're producing less steel than we used to, but we're still producing some, then we still have the capability to expand. Production is down and if it continues we'll eventually lose the ability to produce our own steel, but we're not there yet.
For consumer electronics, I disagree that "everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US", especially if our production of consumer electronics is up. (Is it rising as well?) We may not be the leader anymore, but that's very different from "largely left".
I don't believe that everything is fine with US manufacturing; I think it's a problem that there are many things we still need which we don't make anymore. But there are many things that we do make, even when other countries make them too, so it's not all doom and gloom.
> When you say "has largely left", that implies that we no longer have companies doing the work, that we've lost the capability to do the work. That doesn't seem to be the case, at least not based on these figures.
I think this is wishful thinking. Well we've shed ~75% of jobs from the steel industry in the past 5 decades. We don't produce enough steel to meet our own needs. In fact we are the top importer.
Most of the integrated steel mills are shuttered, down to 11 from something like 50. There used to be 9 in Cleveland alone. Now there is 1.
We have some companies doing the work, but we have fewer, and they're doing less of it.
> If we're producing less steel than we used to, but we're still producing some, then we still have the capability to expand.
This is a meaningless statement. If our production was zero, we'd still have the capacity to expand. The reality though is that we are not expanding production. It's contracting while the industry in general is booming.
If US car manufacturing were down 30% since 1970 while worldwide sales were up 200%, I think everyone would agree that our automotive industry was floundering. In fact the numbers for car manufacturing aren't nearly that bad and most everyone still agrees that the U.S. car industry is in trouble.
> Production is down and if it continues we'll eventually lose the ability to produce our own steel, but we're not there yet.
Of course we're not there. But we don't have to hit zero before we're in trouble, nor do we have to hit zero before we're effectively unable to meet our own needs. At this point we already (net) import something like 25% of the steel that we need.
> For consumer electronics, I disagree that "everyone would likely agree that consumer electronics manufacturing has largely left the US", especially if our production of consumer electronics is up. (Is it rising as well?) We may not be the leader anymore, but that's very different from "largely left".
I made up an example. I suspect that it is up since Woz was putting together Apple Is in a garage. When the numbers are that small, it's not hard for them to grow. At the same time, we basically have no domestic electronics manufacturing industry. The vast, vast majority of that happens in Asia. Even if our overall numbers are actually up, our manufacturing doesn't exist in a vacuum. When our own consumption is virtually completely outsourced, our industry has utterly failed to meet the demand and it's fair to say that the industry has effectively left.
It seems unreasonable to me to look at total output in isolation as if no other factors are relevant. While we might produce 70% of the steel we used to, we produce far less virgin steel than we used to. And we cover far less of our own needs than we used to. And we produce far less of the world's supply than we used to. And we employ far fewer people. And we have far fewer steel mills.
> I don't believe that everything is fine with US manufacturing; I think it's a problem that there are many things we still need which we don't make anymore. But there are many things that we do make, even when other countries make them too, so it's not all doom and gloom.
I don't think it's all doom and gloom, but the steel industry is clearly largely outside the US now.
Active production capacity has left the US, but one of the things that people lament about the loss of industry is the loss of technical capacity. The current US steel industry is clearly large enough to support some high level of technical capacity, even if it doesn't compete in terms of volume.
It seems that really big, really fussy castings get done in Japan and Korea though.
> Fair, I plugged my number in upside down. The production 50 years ago was ~46% higher than today, or today's is ~31% lower.
For such comparisons, we should always use either explicit ratios or (even better) a logarithmic scale. “X% more” and “X% less” are confusing constructs which are easy to screw up.
The backdrop for this is each location has gotten more productive in part because most of this is recycled steal. So, the US has lost far more than 30% of it's steal mills.
AKA, net production of new steal in the US from ore is what has has really declined.
To understand steel production, you need to look at three numbers, not one: production, capacity, and consumption.
One of the things that has happened since 2000 is that China has expanded its steel production capacity a lot. The capacity utilization--which should optimally be around 80-90%--is at 75% right now and plummeting. China basically built its steelmaking capacity assuming consumption growth rates would increase instead of what they actually did (decrease).
The obvious solution is to close down steel mills. Unfortunately, many governments consider steelmaking to be a point of national prestige (the EU started out as the European Coal and Steel Community!), to the point that democratic governments often idolize steelmakers (with other industrial workers) as the "every-man" [1]. Which means no one wants to cut their capacity.
[1] I find this somewhat ironic given that, now that I think about it, no one in my family that I can trace ever worked in a factory of any kind. Although my grandparents and some of my second and third cousins are farmers, which was historically the other idolized profession.
Looking at the amount produced by year it seems like U.S. production has been relatively steady over the last year and not too much lower than it was in previous decades. I think looking at percentages doesn't really tell the full story here, since China's production has increased so much as to overshadow most other countries' output. The "drop" from 25% to 5% wasn't as much due to production leaving the US as it is production not increasing at breakneck pace.
> I think looking at percentages doesn't really tell the full story here, since China's production has increased so much as to overshadow most other countries' output. The "drop" from 25% to 5% wasn't as much due to production leaving the US as it is production not increasing at breakneck pace.
But that is extremely relevant. When our production is flat (actually declining) while world production is soaring, it means that we control very little of the market. We don't control supply. We don't control pricing. This puts our production at higher risk because it's much easier for China and India to price our industry out of business.
Our production per capita has also been cut in half since 1967. So in addition to the world producing more, the US is actually producing a lot less. Our consumption is also up, and we're producing only about half of what we consume now.