To investigate the axial compressive properties and failure modes of 18 locally corroded square steel tube short columns, salt spray corrosion tests were conducted. The findings indicate that local corrosion in the horizontal direction significantly impacts the ultimate bearing capacity of the specimens, with all failures occurring in the corroded areas. However, the influence of the corrosion area on the ultimate bearing capacity and ductility of the specimens is not evident. A local corrosion model for square steel tube short columns was developed using the finite element method. The ultimate bearing capacity determined through finite element simulation closely aligns with experimental results, validating the reliability of the simulation approach. Moreover, a comparison is made between the prediction models of the BP neural network and the GA-BP neural network, with the prediction effectiveness of each model evaluated using the leave-one-out method. The verification results indicate that the GA-BP neural network model demonstrates superior predictive performance, with an average error of 3.14%.