A college friend works in the steel industry in northwest Indiana; he says they can’t compete with the Chinese steel being dumped on our market. This is a step in the right direction. Take a look at the world wide steel production numbers:
The chart on page 7 is most telling; world steel production has more than doubled since 2000, with the greatest share of that increase coming from China. With an annual production approaching ONE BILLION TONS, China produces half of the world’s steel.
Not all of that is intended for domestic Chinese consumption, or for products intended for domestic Chinese consumption.
Now, some other facts:
Alcoa is shutting down it’s processing plant in Port Lavaca Texas (where my brother in law is being laid off). In 2002, there were 22 aluminum smelters in the United States. Today, there are four, and one of those is still producing only because of a heavy subsidy from the State of New York. Where is the aluminum production? The People’s Republic of China.
Another friend works for Dow Agrosciences; they are being undercut in fertilizer production from cheap fertlizers produced in....the People’s Republic of China.
My father’s business sold industrial process regulation equipment to manufacturing plants in the midwest. His business closed because all of the factories he sold to have closed, too.
My son has a degree in Chemical Engineering, and is working quality assurance for a company that imports pharmaceutical precursors...from Asia. I wonder how long it will be before the Asian countries manufacture of the finished products put him out of a job, too.
Smoot-Hawley, be damned. If we don’t do something to maintain a manufacturing industry, we become a nation of waitresses and busboys. And tell your kids to learn both Mandarin and Spanish. They can be useful translating the orders from the bosses to the workers.
Excellent comments. My friends in the South were appalled when Smithfield was sold to China. Smithfield was ome of the biggest pork producters in the U.S. They also run retail food outlets for pork and chicken that are worth driving miles out of one’s way.
But that’s nothing compared to steel and other heavy industry. Thank God we finally have a spokesman and a champion trying to get back what has been sold out from under us.
Excellent Post. All Americans should read it to find out what china has been doing to the USA.
The obamatrade TPP will completely destroy any U.S. industries still in the USA , steel etc. TPP only helps China even more.
TPP is much worse than even NAFTA (Clinton signed NAFTA)
In Tons how many more times does China manufacture in tons of steel vs the USA ? I’d guess it’s many times.
Factories = production = mass production = wealth building. Hard to produce much wealth being a busboy or a waiter.
China is destroying the USA and has been for 30 years. Look at their cities, 25,000 skycrapers planned for the coming decades in China.