Abandoned blast furnace of
United states steel Braddock works. (Photo by Forsaken Films on Unsplash)
Former President Donald Trump's decision to impose huge new
tariffs on imported steel came with an explicit promise about resurrecting the
American steel industry.
"We're bringing it all back," Trump told reporters
in May 2018 as he ordered the placement of 25 percent tariffs on nearly all
steel imported into the United States. In exchange for making steel prices
"a little bit more expensive," Trump believed the tariffs would boost
domestic production "like it used to be in the old days when we actually
had steel," he said in
August of that same year. And when campaigning for reelection a year later, he
was eager to claim credit for
taking the steel industry from "dead" to "thriving."
But nearly six years after those tariffs were announced,
government data show that America's annual steel output has fallen below the
level recorded in 2017—the last full year before Trump's tariffs were imposed.
America produced 80 million metric tons of raw steel in 2023,
according to new data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which tracks the annual output of
iron, steel, and other industrial commodities. That's down from 80.5 million
metric tons of steel produced in 2022.