What is driving the steel mill malady?
You’ve seen the headlines. Sterling, IL, becomes a ghost town as the Sterling Steel Mill Operations close down. LTV leaves a big “job hole” in Cleveland. Retirees lose their “self-funded” pensions. Workers with missing fingers and toes now have to learn new skills, move to new cities, and hold their families together with little income and no hope of relief. Not a pretty site. As much as I’d like to blame Bill Clinton’s anti-labor policies during his 8 years of whatever it was he thought he was doing, that is not the source of the problem. Simply, there is a world-wide glut of steel production. Whenever you have a vital product like this, you will have an oversupply because governments are compelled to “protect” manufacturers by adding tariffs and such to bolster the price. That draws more players to the field. Bill Clinton didn’t initiate that. He did not have tariffs with that steel.
