Word: steel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...point last week, European negotiators seemed ready to limit their share of the American steel market at least somewhat. But when Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige met in New York City with a group of top steel-industry executives to try to sell them on the idea, they were not interested...
...Steel's woes are not due entirely to imports. Many of its troubles are made in the U.S. Perhaps the most important difficulty the industry faces is excessively high wages. Robert Crandall, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, estimates that American steel companies are now paying 75% more than the wages paid in other U.S. manufacturing industries. The average union wage and benefit payment: $22 an hour. Says Crandall: "That is the industry's biggest problem...
Whenever business has soured, steel executives have sought Government protection, usually by arguing that all they need is a li little breathing room so that they can modernize their factories. Rather than using the time to upgrade their plants, however, the companies have been down grading their steel operations...
During the past year alone, a number of the biggest and best-known American steel companies have been diversifying out of the industry. U.S. Steel spent $6.2 billion to acquire Marathon Oil Co. The steel giant is now seeking to sell off a 50% interest in RMI Co., the second largest American producer of titanium, a steel-like strategic metal that is crucial to the aerospace industry, to help pay for the Marathon take over. Meanwhile, National Steel Corp., the sixth largest U.S. producer, has spent $75 million to take over savings and loans in Miami and New York...
Last week's Commerce Department rulings might give U.S. steel producers some more of that precious breathing room they keep asking for in order to get their industry back on track. The action, though, could bring on the very sort of risky and pointless transatlantic trade battles that would benefit no one. Either way, the outlook for steelmen is not encouraging. not encouraging. - By Christopher Byron. Reported by Gisela Bolte/Washington and Lawrence Malkin/Paris