Quote:United States Steel would like to accelerate its investments and hire back laid-off employees now that Donald Trump will be occupying the Oval Office, CEO Mario Longhi told CNBC on Wednesday.

"We already structured to do some things, but when you see in the near future improvement to the tax laws, improvements to regulation, those two things by themselves may be a significant driver to what we're going to do," he said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/07/us-steel-...-says.html

fyi....the muffinman beat ya to the punch

http://csnbbs.com/thread-801651-post-138...id13883851

(12-08-2016 07:47 AM)TechRocks Wrote:  

Quote:United States Steel would like to accelerate its investments and hire back laid-off employees now that Donald Trump will be occupying the Oval Office, CEO Mario Longhi told CNBC on Wednesday.

"We already structured to do some things, but when you see in the near future improvement to the tax laws, improvements to regulation, those two things by themselves may be a significant driver to what we're going to do," he said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/07/us-steel-...-says.html

Good article.

He's probably also hoping Trump gets tough with China. China dumped steel on the world markets and basically shut down the US steel industry.

Good. Hopefully the Birmingham plant will reopen if US Steel is actually able to make this happen. It'd be nice to see the Pittsburgh of the South up and running again.

(12-08-2016 07:47 AM)TechRocks Wrote:  

Quote:United States Steel would like to accelerate its investments and hire back laid-off employees now that Donald Trump will be occupying the Oval Office, CEO Mario Longhi told CNBC on Wednesday.

"We already structured to do some things, but when you see in the near future improvement to the tax laws, improvements to regulation, those two things by themselves may be a significant driver to what we're going to do," he said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/07/us-steel-...-says.html

I try, but it's hell gettin' old.

BTW folks, if Trump changes the voting dynamics in the rustbelt states, dims will be shyting bricks for years and years to come.

(12-08-2016 08:37 AM)TechRocks Wrote:  BTW folks, if Trump changes the voting dynamics in the rustbelt states, dims will be shyting bricks for years and years to come.

And he's damn close to doing that now.

In graduate school, we spent a fair amount of time studying the United States Steel industry. There were lots of reasons for the decline of Big Steel (the term traditionally used to describe the main players: US Steel, Bethlehem, Republic, Kaiser, etc.)

One aspect that has never been reconciled is the cost of transportation. Whether imported steel is produced in China, Germany, Japan, Korea, etc., every one carries a significant cost component that is not in US companies expenses. This should be a significant advantage for domestic suppliers.

A second major factor was that at the end of WWII, America's steel industry, built between 1900 and 1940, was past its prime and Germany's and Japan's were devastated. China didn't even have a steel industry. So as our plants continued to age, the competition was building new plants with modern technology (continuous casting, basic oxygen furnaces, etc.).

But, the biggest hurdle to modernization, IMO, is that our government has continuously over the past 60 years, protected our steel industry with tariffs that allowed Big Steel to decay and crumble.

A once great industry is a shell of its former self.

(12-08-2016 09:09 AM)QuestionSocratic Wrote:  In graduate school, we spent a fair amount of time studying the United States Steel industry. There were lots of reasons for the decline of Big Steel (the term traditionally used to describe the main players: US Steel, Bethlehem, Republic, Kaiser, etc.)

One aspect that has never been reconciled is the cost of transportation. Whether imported steel is produced in China, Germany, Japan, Korea, etc., every one carries a significant cost component that is not in US companies expenses. This should be a significant advantage for domestic suppliers.

A second major factor was that at the end of WWII, America's steel industry, built between 1900 and 1940, was past its prime and Germany's and Japan's were devastated. China didn't even have a steel industry. So as our plants continued to age, the competition was building new plants with modern technology (continuous casting, basic oxygen furnaces, etc.).

But, the biggest hurdle to modernization, IMO, is that our government has continuously over the past 60 years, protected our steel industry with tariffs that allowed Big Steel to decay and crumble.

A once great industry is a shell of its former self.

I'm all for seeing our government do everything possible to encourage our steel industry to build competitive new plants. What those tariffs did was protect the unions while the industry itself decayed. I say, kick the unions to the curb and put Americans back to work. We can compete against anyone in the world.

(12-08-2016 09:14 AM)TechRocks Wrote:  I'm all for seeing our government do everything possible to encourage our steel industry to build competitive new plants. What those tariffs did was protect the unions while the industry itself decayed. I say, kick the unions to the curb and put Americans back to work. We can compete against anyone in the world.

Actually, we really can't. But the wounds are self-inflicted, largely government-inflicted. Reduce our corporate and individual tax rates to world-class levels, introduce a consumption tax to make up for lost revenues, and streamline our regulatory processes, and then we could compete with anyone. At least for upper end manufacturing jobs, making complex stuff. We can't sew Nikes as cheaply as Thailand, but they can't execute some of the tasks that we can ask of our labor.

Having the highest corporate tax rates in the world, and seeking to offset that by providing special-interest tax breaks and imposing tariffs, guarantees nothing more or less than the decline and fall of US industry. Don't believe me? Open your eyes. It's been going on around us for years.