7 Steel
Smith
The big decrease in U.S. steel production happened in the 1970s, when Chinese production was practically nonexistent. But also, the U.S. imports very little steel from China — America’s biggest foreign suppliers are Canada and Mexico, while China is just a footnote.
There are other reasons to doubt the “import competition” story as the main factor here. U.S. steel production mostly fell during the 1970s, at a time when imports weren’t really rising much at all. Imports themselves rose first in the 1960s and then in the 1990s, at times when U.S. production was flat or rising; other than those times, imports have been basically flat. In fact, in terms of raw tonnage, steel imports were barely larger in 2019 than in 1968.
America’s steel exports were at record highs from the late 2000s through the 2010s.