US Steel Industry Research Articles

Making “Enemies”: Industry‐State Subterfuge and US Fair Trade Practices Towards Non‐Market Economies Since 1960

AbstractStudies on US “non‐market economy” (NME) antidumping (AD) policy frame its origins as either an ideological relic of the Cold War or as a case of regulatory capture informed by strategic filing patterns. While these insights are invaluable, they do not address the underlying social processes which inform the creation of economic concepts in the first instance. NME policy evolved out of the legal‐discursive tactics employed by the US steel industry hoping to receive relief from imports, and a US state which had to simultaneously provide a form of protection to the steel industry and maintain an international commitment to free trade. Steel and the state used legal subterfuge to achieve these goals. Accordingly, NME policy developed from the institutional struggle between two stakeholders in a strategic action field.

The Backlash Against Neoliberal Globalization from Above: Elite Origins of the Crisis of the New Constitutionalism

This article recounts the backlash against the neoliberal constitutionalism that locked in free trade and capital rights through the multilateral treaty organizations of the 1990s. It argues that we can find important forces in the disruption of the status quo among the elite losers of the 1990s settlement. Undercut by competition from China, the US steel industry, in particular, became a vocal opponent of unconditional free trade and a red thread linking all of Trump’s primary advisers on matters of trade. Steel lobbyists themselves helped frame a critique of actually existing neoliberal globalism, which Trump both adopted and acted on as part of his trade war. By searching for the contemporary attack on neoliberal constitutionalism among the disgruntled corporate elite, we find that our current crisis must be framed as a backlash from above as well as one from below.

How the steel industry has been affected by the trade war between the USA and China

This research paper mainly focuses on how the US and Chinese steel industry has been affected by the trade war between the USA and China. One of the main election manifestos of Donald Trump was to ...

Company stock reactions to black noise tweets: evidence from steel industry

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to test the validity of super-fast development of social media and its wide range of use by even professional investors as the new financial contagion which is carried with “Black Noise” tweets. Newly established robotic modern finance environment and various news channels provide the necessary infrastructure to utilize a focused and directed market noise. Measuring the impact of this noise in the financial market volatility is a crucial and important issue. Methodology - In this study, we investigate the news impact of trade wars and monetary policy news on steel industry of US and its reflection on Turkish markets utilizing 30 minutes high frequency return data. The novelty is this study is the interaction terms that we generated and embedded in the E-GARCH models to test the reactions of steel major listed US steel industry companies such as US Steel, AK Steel, Nucor and the pioneer Turkish company Eregli in this sector. Findings- Findings of this study highlights that specific news about trade war and monetary policy have a significant impact on steel company returns. For further research papers testing the speculation strength of such tweet can be a beneficial topic for the other researchers. Conclusion- As a result of this study, being one the major market makers, Trump’s direct messages to the market via Twitter and such, about sanctions, interest rates and monetary policy creates “Black Noise” in financial markets. Even in a durable production industry like steel sector this leads to speculation.

Automation and jobs: when technology boosts employment*

SUMMARY Will new technologies cause industries to shed jobs, requiring novel policies to address mass unemployment? Sometimes productivity-enhancing technology increases industry employment instead. In manufacturing, jobs grew along with productivity for a century or more; only later did productivity gains bring declining employment. What changed? The elasticity of demand. Using data over two centuries for US textile, steel and auto industries, this paper shows that automation initially spurred job growth because demand was highly elastic. But demand later became satiated, leading to job losses. A simple model explains why this pattern might be common, suggesting that today’s technologies may cause some industries to decline and others to grow. Automation might not cause mass unemployment, but it may well require workers to make disruptive transitions to new industries, requiring new skills and occupations.

Water and Steel: The 1977 Johnstown Flood and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation

ABSTRACT On the evening of July 19, 1977, it began raining over Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and didn't stop until twelve inches of rain had fallen in ten hours. In addition to the rain falling from the skies, water also rushed down the mountain slopes above the city and dams gave way, wreaking devastation. By the following morning, eighty-six people were dead, hundreds were injured, four dams had broken apart or eroded, and residents of the community began cleaning up following the third major flood to strike the city since its founding in the early nineteenth century. Once a vital hub of the US steel industry, the 1977 flood altered Johnstown's economic future. The city that once served as home to more than 16,000 steel workers was forced to reinvent its economy, something that remains a work in progress more than forty years since the deluge of 1977.

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION RATES IN THE US STEEL INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT The adoption of new technology has several consequences ranging from sustaining the firm’’s competitiveness down to the tactical level of targeting marketing efforts to certain promising segments. In here, technology adoption models were surveyed and applied to real data in the search for a model that could describe the US steel industry. After 1974 the Open Hearth, Basic Oxygen Furnace, and the Electric Arc Furnace were the three competing technologies in the US steel industry. The simple logistic fit and the competitive Lotka-Volterra model were considered to describe the data. Model parameters for the logistic fit were obtained by the least squares method and a steepest descent search algorithm. The competitive Lotka-Volterra model was solved using a Runge-Kutta numerical integration after obtaining parameters with a linear regression. Neither of these two models was successful in describing the data. Therefore, a modified Lotka-Volterra model was developed to describe a system dynamics where all players compete for one finite resource. This model was very successful in predicting the production rates of steel by the Basic Oxygen Furnace, the Open Hearth, and the Electric Arc Furnace over the period of available data (1978 through 2017). Besides showing that the steel market dynamics in the US is not akin to the competition in biological systems as proposed by Volterra, the model correctly predicted the extinction of the OH technology in the US in 1991. Forecasts from the resource limited Lotka-Volterra predict that the Basic Oxygen Furnace technology should go extinct in the US in the year 2033, whereas EAF production shall accelerate. “There where there is no struggle against fate there shall you resurrect your soul.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago Keywords Steel, industry dynamics, model, Lotka-Volterra, technology, adoption

Race, Class, and Labor: White Skin Privilege and Oppression

Abstract This article examines the relationship of race and class using the lens of working-class experiences inside the US steel and auto industries. It focuses on the applicability of white skin privilege to the conditions of labor, and introduces the concept of comparative forms of oppression. Additionally, it considerations white skin privilege from the perspective of human rights, and ends with detailed statistical information and consideration of race and gender in relationship to various job categories.

G20 at Hamburg: America Jilted, World Wilted

The post-US withdrawal of Paris Pact at Hamburg was not adequately appropriative of the world mood. Such congregations and jamborees do create artificial camaraderie sans any tangible results, and the same has been witnessed at the Hamburg-Germany. Trump Presidency would be remembered for its biggest disservice to the cause of maintaining climate ecology on the planet earth. Trump administration has emasculated the Paris Pact on Climate Change by shamelessly abandoning it. However, trade, security, and economic agenda have also met the predictable permutations. Despite the fact of an optimistic environment, there has been a sense of deja vu among the members of the grouping at the Hamburg regarding many issues, particularly about climate change. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made a statement, “I think it’s very clear that we could not reach consensus, but the differences were not papered over, they were clearly stated” as reported by the BBC News on July 08, 2017. But the consensus is the hallmark of such organizations and that was conspicuous by its absence to the cheers of US capitalist and protectionist classes. But, of late, it is being seen that these groupings have been failing in their mandate. Therefore, such a trend is not good for the world as a whole and raises highly annoying questions like; has G20 lost its relevance? What is the utility of such groupings like G8, G20, G77, or other regional alliances? Are these gatherings merely reduced to talking territories, photo-ops, and political tourism at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? What is the relevance of UNO in the contemporary world? International institutions like G20 must not be made hostage to one or few countries. In fact, it was an occasion to underline the proactive approach of G20 on its agenda implementation within the stipulated time frame. Moreover, G20 could have put its foot down on all outstanding issues excluding the US. The President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has rightly designated the EU is in an “elevated battle mood” to resort to the countermeasures on the US sidling to the policy of protectionism to promote the US steel industry.

Automation and Jobs: When Technology Boosts Employment

Will new technologies cause industries to shed jobs, requiring novel policies to address mass unemployment? Sometimes productivity-enhancing technology increases industry employment instead. In manufacturing, jobs grew along with productivity for a century or more; only later did productivity gains bring declining employment. What changed? The elasticity of demand. Using data over two centuries for US textile, steel, and auto industries, this paper shows that automation initially spurred job growth because demand was highly elastic. But demand later became satiated, leading to job losses. A simple model explains why this pattern might be common, suggesting that today’s technologies may cause some industries to decline and others to grow. Automation might not cause mass unemployment, but it may well require workers to make disruptive transitions to new industries, requiring new skills and occupations.

An empirical exploration of Chinese imports and the US steel industry

The paper identifies four key issues concerning the relationship between Chinese imports and the US steel industry: currency manipulation, state-owned enterprises, subsidisation, and environmental regulations. Given these issues, we run a regression to empirically explore the relationship between Chinese imports and US steel prices. We found that Chinese imports have two conflicting effects: one is to lower US steel prices while the other is to increase the prices via China's increasing market share. The overall impact is that Chinese imports increase US steel prices, as the effect due to market share is larger than the demand effect. With these findings, we suggest that, of the four effects considered, Chinese subsidisation is the most crucial.

Challenges facing the US steel industry

Badri Narayanan, senior research analyst with Beroe, Inc., examines the impact of various factors on the US steel market and the implications for consumers in the short-to-medium term.

Antidumping and Production-Line Exit: The Case of the US Steel Industry

We present and examine a novel data set that contains production line information inside US steel plants. We exploit this highly disaggregated data to perform the first study of entry and exit behavior at the level of the production line within individual plants. Our empirical analysis reveals a number of interesting results. First, smaller production lines are more likely to shut down, as are lines that are owned by larger firms. Younger production lines and lines that have undergone modernization are more likely to survive. Our results indicate that lines that are operated by integrated producers are more likely to exit. We find no evidence, however, that antidumping decreases the likelihood of exit, despite the steel industry’s frequent use of antidumping protection.

Reallocation and Technology: Evidence from the US Steel Industry

We measure the impact of a drastic new technology for producing steel—the minimill—on industry-wide productivity in the US steel industry, using unique plant-level data between 1963 and 2002. The sharp increase in the industry's productivity is linked to this new technology through two distinct mechanisms: (i ) the mere displacement of the older technology (vertically integrated producers) was responsible for a third of the increase in the industry's productivity, and (ii ) increased competition, due the minimill expansion, drove a productivity resurgence at the surviving vertical integrated producers and, consequently, the productivity of the industry as a whole. (JEL D24, L13, L23, L61, M11, O31, O33)

Rise and Fall of the Contract System in the American Iron and Steel Industry

This paper investigates the historical accounts of the ineffectiveness of the contract system in the US iron and steel industry during the second half of the nineteenth-century. The high rate of technological innovation, along with the extensive bargaining power of the old industrial crafts, made output-related pay so costly as to be unsustainable in the long run. A sliding scale, together with piece-rate pay, did nothing but exacerbate the labour problem.

A Comparative Cost Disadvantage Driven By Foreign Competition

This study focuses on the impact of foreign physical steel imports on the output of the US steel industry. This industry faces a comparative disadvantage in costs and from reduced utilized capacity in steel making. The strong desire of many foreign steel producers to export steel to the US lucrative market led to their plant modernization with the associated economies of scale. This led to steel import surge in America. The imposed trade restrictions had mixed outcomes. The domestic steel output is modeled as function of steel imports and from the size of the economy addressed by shipments. The OLS estimate of steel imports is insignificant and this could be explained by the ineffectiveness of the various instituted trade instruments, from increased foreign prices of steel, and from depreciated dollars at some points in time during the period in study. As expected the measure of the economyshipments variable has a positive impact on steel production.

An International Perspective: Widening Existing Bridges with Orthotropic Steel Deck Panels

Rehabilitation of existing bridges is an extremely complex and challenging aspect of bridge engineering. Widening of existing bridges without interruption of traffic is even more complex. The I-35W tragedy demonstrates the danger to the public during bridge renovation. The focus of this discussion is conceptual solutions, an overview of the fundamental issues or choices in practicable widenings. The USA Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is promoting the term Accelerated Bridge Construction "ABC" for economical efficient construction methods with more prefabrication and less site work. The slogan is "Get-In, Get Out and Stay out". The technique of orthotropic steel deck panel replacement is the innovative ABC technique for widening existing bridges. The goal of any ABC method is to minimize the effects on other stakeholders and achieve the FHWA's desired 100-year service life for a new bridge. Typical stakeholders are commuters, shipping companies, the environment, railroads, etc. FHWA's goal is (a) to minimize traffic delays while erecting a bridge, (b) to minimize river commerce and harbor shipping delays while erecting a bridge over navigable bodies of water, and (c) to minimize environmental impacts while erecting a bridge. Some of the featured existing bridges were not physically widened, but their traffic flow was increased via renovation of the existing deck system with orthotropic steel deck panels. Bridges built and in operation with steel orthotropic steel decks in North America are very rare; about 100–120 are orthotropic while there are 650 000 bridges in the USA alone. Many American engineers feel that welded orthotropic steel decks are too challenging to design and offer little benefit to the owners of bridges. The FHWA is currently in the process of creating a new orthotropic bridge manual to replace the 1963 Orthotropic Bridge Manual authored by Roman Wolchuk and published by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). There is lack of enthusiasm in the USA for orthotropic bridges that existed in the 1960s among the US steel industry and affiliated trade associates. Another design challenge is the lack of orthotropic bridge design software. Although US software has many excellent specialized bridge design programs, none is specific for orthotropic bridges based on the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Bridge codes. Ironically USA orthotropic experts are involved in the actual design or review of designs of bridges located in other countries.Featured widened bridges from around the world include the Cologne-Rodenkirchen Bridge of Germany (1994); Wakato Ohashi Suspension of Japan, (1999); Angus L. Macdonald Bridge (1999); Tamar Suspension Bridge, UK (2001)), and the Songsu Bridge, Korea (2002). A comprehensive reference list is provided to assist in obtaining more detailed design and fabrication information about renovated bridges with orthotropic steel decks. A comprehensive table of projects located around the world is also included.

Trade-restriction policies ineffectiveness in the US steel industry

This study examines the impact of the trade restrictions on steel imports in order to protect the US steel industry. During the period of 1963 to 1988, the industry experienced a tremendous decline in its output. Trade restrictions are implemented to limit steel imports. The overall goal of this study is to estimate the impact of the steel trade restriction regimes on the output of the industry. Beside foreign competition, the study addresses the impact of other factors – other shipments (nonsteel shipments) and the prices of steel substitutes – aluminum, and plastic and rubber that may have also caused variation in steel production. The study makes two major contributions. First, the study constructs the trade restriction regimes and other high-frequency monthly data set on steel output and factor prices. Second, output is modelled as a function of the trade restriction regimes, other shipments and factor prices. Regression results show that the protection regimes are not statistically significant to enhance output expansion. This implies policies ineffectiveness and invalidates the call for the trade restrictions. The other shipments variable enhances output demand while the prices of the steel substitutes do not. Given the results here and for the fact that the mini-mills were competitive during the regime periods, a competition, not protective trade may be warranted.

Trade Policy and Loss Aversion

We develop a political economy model where loss aversion and reference dependence are important in shaping people's preferences over trade policy. The policy implications of the augmented model differ in three ways: there is a region of compensating protection, where a decline in the world price leads to an offsetting increase in protection, such that a constant domestic price is maintained; protection following a single negative price shock will be persistent; and irrespective of the extent of lobbying, there will be a deviation from free trade that favors loss-making industries. The augmented model explains protections of the US steel industry since 1980. (JEL F13, F14, L61)

Environmental management and strategy in the face of regulatory intensity: radioactive contamination in the US steel industry

AbstractRecent business literature argues that several incentives drive firms to cooperate with government environmental regulators and regulation without pressure from the government. This study explores and tests such arguments using a metric called regulatory intensity. The study uses survey data from the radioactive scrap metal industry. The findings challenge the recent literature that ‘going green pays’. The study found that strong government actions (regulatory intensity) are related to firm cooperation. Firms seem to adopt cooperative strategies when coerced to do so by the government. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.