The US steel industry is in better economic shape now than it has been in decades.
Nucor is nearly worth more than ArcelorMittal and earned more last quarter than ArcelorMittal did. Unthinkable just a few years ago.
Nucor's sales jumped from $16b to $25b in two years up through fiscal 2018. Net income jumped from $80m in 2015, to $2.3 billion in 2018 (operating income went from $654m to $3.3b).
US Steel Corporation saw its sales jump from $10b to $14b over two years through 2018, net income jumped from negative $1.6b in 2015 to positive $1.1b (operating income went from -$525m to +$950m over that time).
The US steel industry has been a disaster for decades. Now it's one of the strongest in the world financially. China's steel companies are hemorrhaging and require constant state support stimulus by comparison.
We can either have a healthy, strong domestic steel industry, or we can do nothing and watch China put it into the ground through dumping and massive state subsidies. I don't agree with any state protectionism. So long as China gets away with what they've been doing for decades in industries like steel, I agree with protecting important domestic industries. Steel companies (whether they're in the US or elsewhere) are directly competing with the Chinese state, the US state should intervene given the playing field is very uneven.
No, it isn't. One share of Nucor costs more than one share of MT. This comparison isn't even in the ballpark of the correct way to compare two companies' worths. Nucor has 1/4th of the revenue and 1/5th of the production.
> We can either have a healthy, strong domestic steel industry, or we can do nothing and watch China put it into the ground through dumping and massive state subsidies
Steel is an intermediate product. No one buys steel as the final product. Changes in price of steel ripple across other industries for this reason. Steel makes up 2% of world trade and steel manufacturers provide the US with 81000 jobs, while our total manufacturers employ 12 million. On the chip manufacturing side, Intel alone employees over 100 thousand. It's more important to consider what the effects of tarriffs are on other parts of the economy than jerking around a little bit of revenue or job growth in a small specific US industry.
Also, China produces 10x more steel than the US, and is the largest consumer of steel. It makes sense - they're building out infrastructure at a really fast pace.
How many other industries will be hurt in exchange for a "healthy, strong" (whatever hard numbers, if any, those words are actually meant to convey) domestic steel industry? That is all that matters.
How much of that sales jump is from increase in cost of steel? All US companies are now forced to buy more expensive US-produced steel. This is exactly what economists predicted. US steel companies make more money at the expense of everybody else.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/steel-production
Looking at 5 years or more there doesn't seem to be such big increase in steel production.
And coal is in decline:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/industrial-produc...
Also I read quite a few articles over the last year about closing down of coal mines, mainly in PA and WV.