This is an interesting thread for me, because I am a potential casualty if some sort of balance isn't achieved in the world steel trade.
I don't know if either one of you guys caught our international president George Becker on Cspan recently testifying before congress. George was very direct, "either we are going to have a steel industry in this country or we are not, simple as that."
It is true that some industrialists could care less if the domestic steel industry is destroyed. Short term quick profit types. They forget what will happen in a few years when they need steel and it is unavailable to them at a reasonable price on the world market.
Our domestic steel industry is the most efficient in the world. We have the best labor productivity in the world. It takes fewer man hours to make a ton of steel in the USA than anywhere else in the world!
While writing this note the US mail came and I got a form letter from my congressman Sherrod Brown. Sherrod claims that steel imports have increased by almost 50% in the last year. He should know, he is on the Commerce Committee.
Your email pal, Tom Lehman
Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> Henry C K,
>
> Leading US mfgs want cheap foreign steel at the expense of American mfgs,
> in particular Bethlehem, and American unions; you reason that therefore
> the realities of inter-imperial rivalry, at the center of Lenin's and
> Brenner's theory, have given way to international cooperation at the
> expense of the nation or at least a complex international vertical
> integration in which leading US MNCs (e.g. auto producers or Caterpiller)
> make use of intermediate inputs from firms located in the NICs or Japan
> (whose steel production doubtless makes complex use of the international
> division of labor as well).
>
> Again, you see only one side of things. Yes, there is doubtless more use of
> an international division of labor but this does not mean that these same
> US MNCs do not find themselves in vicious world market competition with
> their counterparts in Europe, Japan and to a lesser extent the NICs and
> indeed because of that (intensified world market competition among
> nationally based multinationals) need the cheapest steel available. In
> defending the interests of the capitalist class a whole, the state now must
> make a decision which fraction or industries must be sacrificed so that US
> capital as a whole can achieve the competitive superiority on the world
> market that has become a matter of life and death given the crisis of
> overproduction. The cannabilization of steel may be the price US capital
> must pay to have a chance to survive slaughterous competition in the world
> market.
>
> peace, rakesh