That is totally untrue. Cheap foreign steel dumped on the markets drove the steel industry out of business.
I'll grant you that cheap foreign imports were part of the problem..... but, you can't say that high labor cost and taxes were not also to blame. It wasn't JUST steel workers that were getting laid off.
Cities were strapping exhorbitant taxes on these cash-cow businesses... and, look what it got them, dead cows.