Trump promised to protect American steel workers. Instead, they're being laid off at alarming rates

The New York Times:

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. — At this sprawling steel mill on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the workers have one number in mind. Not how many tons of steel roll off the line, or how many hours they work, but where they fall on the plant’s seniority list.

In September, ArcelorMittal, which owns the mill, announced that it would lay off 150 of the plant’s 207 workers next year. While the cuts will start with the most junior employees, they will go so deep that even workers with decades of experience will be cast out.

“I told my son, ‘Christmas is going to be kind of scarce, because Mommy’s going to lose her job soon,’” said Kimberly Allen, a steelworker and single parent who has worked at the plant for more than 22 years. On the seniority list, she’s 72nd.

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Yet another broken promise to hardworking, struggling Americans. Time to wake up, America.

And before anybody cries: mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/business/economy/trump-steel-industry-layoffs.amp.html

Trump is full of shit;  and so is his ever-willing mouthpiece, Smelly  (Nothing like getting in early --  before Smelly' even thinks of commenting..).

The steel industry in the USA, Canada, Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden has been shrinking since the 1980s, as the companies themselves have been involved in establishing new gigantic mega-steelworks overseas in lower cost/lower regulation countries (e.g. China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Mexico, and parts of Eastern Europe and Africa..).

While traditional former-steel producers are now re-importing steels and alloys, to feed a handful of high-end highly-automated rolling mills, where their multi-skilled workforces are only a small fraction of their previous numbers, and with a lower turnover of manpower as workers hold onto their scarce jobs for a lot longer..

Yet more evidence of how Big Corporations are actually destroying jobs in western countries, as they export that work (and employment opportunities) into their preferred lower-cost 'third world' and developing countries.  When expressed as a % of some countries' total workforces, in many Western countries today, "Big" Businesses' share of that workforce has virtually halved since the 1970s (from over 25% back when, to less than 15% now..).

Nothing to do with the Chinese dumping cheap Steel on the markets then !

nicko wrote:
Nothing to do with the Chinese dumping cheap Steel on the markets then !

See my earlier post above, where China heads the list of the low cost/low regulation countries...

There are steel mills in China where one steelworks has a greater annual capacity to produce pig iron, then the entire capacity of all the steelworks in the USA, combined..


BHP, the Melbourne and London-headquarted Aussie giant, was actually involved with developing steelmills in China, Indonesia and Malaysia back in the 1970s and '80s --  at the same time that they were winding down the production (and re-investments..) in their own Aussie plants..

The big Aussie, American, British, Japanese and German iron&steel corporations are still in business --  but these days in joint-partnerships with those gigantic new Asian mills.


Australia, Brazil, China, India, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, the USA and Canada are the biggest miners and producers of iron ore;  while China is by far the largest exporter of the processed iron and steel back onto world markets..  (Which also makes them the largest importer of both iron ore and coking coal..).

Trump has known all along that he has no chance on delivering on those spurious promises that he was so carelessly making to American workers last year..

Trump promised a big tarrif on steel imports, freaked out the market causing foreign producers to rush to beat the tarrif, but has taken no action on actually passing the tarrif. His big mouth has fucked up yet again.

Anybody who thought he should have been given a chance was obviously not informed or thinking clearly.

Why can't his lemmings wake up to the fact that if his lips are moving he's lying!!

Ben Reilly wrote:
Trump promised a big tarrif on steel imports, freaked out the market causing foreign producers to rush to beat the tarrif, but has taken no action on actually passing the tarrif. His big mouth has fucked up yet again.

Anybody who thought he should have been given a chance was obviously not informed or thinking clearly.

Those suggested tariffs from Trump would not have helped the US industry, anyway...

Not when old blast furnaces and steelworks have already been dismantled and sold off for scrap metal to those very same Mexican, Chinese and Indian competitors..

It's not like they simply "mothball" old steelworks --  there is no longer anything left to actually re-start.

The long slow decline in the American, British and Aussie 'basic steel making' industries actually got a 'kick-along' from the Reagan-Thatcher anti-industrial policies of the 1980s.. Today all that remains in our countries is the high-tech, highly automated, low-employment, high-end "value adding" rolling and fabricating mills...

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:
Trump promised a big tarrif on steel imports, freaked out the market causing foreign producers to rush to beat the tarrif, but has taken no action on actually passing the tarrif. His big mouth has fucked up yet again.

Anybody who thought he should have been given a chance was obviously not informed or thinking clearly.

Those suggested tariffs would not have helped, anyway...

Not when old blast furnaces and steelworks have already been dismantled and sold off for scrap metal to those very same Mexican, Chinese and Indian competitors..

It's not like they simply "mothball" old steelworks --  there is no longer anything left to actually re-start.

The long slow decline in the American, British and Aussie steel industries actually got a 'kick-along' from the Reagan-Thatcher anti-industrial policies of the 1980s..

That's a good point. If American steel producers actually did see a way into the market due to a Trump tariff, they'd have to re-invest in infrastructure ... which would probably mean laying off workers to pay for it.

By the way, I learned how to spell "tariff."