Restructuring in Place: Japanese Investment, Production Organization, and the Geography of Steel

Abstract

AbstractJapanese investment has set in motion a restructuring of the U.S. steel industry. This restructuring is occurring on three related geographic scales. At the global scale, Japanese investment in U.S. steel reflects a more general shift in the center of steel production technology and accumulation from the U.S. and western Europe to Japan. Japanese advances are now diffusing back to the U.S. via Japanese direct investment and organizational restructuring. At the national level, within the U.S., Japanese investment reinforces a westward shift in the center of steel production from the traditional Pittsburgh region to Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. This spatial redirection stems from the high fixed costs of integrated steel production, the importance of the automobile industry as a user of steel, and the particular requirement of supplying steel to the automotive transplants and their suppliers on a just-in-time basis. At the plant or organizational level, Japanese direct investment has set in motion a ...