"Pete & sheri" wrote in message
...
I recently heard about the China purchases of steel so I did a little
surfing and found a recent (Newsweek, I think it was) article on the
subject. The article did acknowledge the facts listed below, but, in
addition, it said that the main reason that the China purchases are a
problem for us is that our (US) method of making steel has changed. It
said that we used to use mostly open hearth furnaces which can use iron
ore, but now we use mostly electric furnaces, that require scrap steel,
instead.
That's not a solution, though. I'd guess it means that costs will
stay higher, but maybe it'll mean that some companies will restart open
hearth steel manufacturing?? How else can the US and world market
for steel products grow?

The generic term for making steel from iron ore is "primary steelmaking."
Electric-furnace minimills use scrap. That's called "secondary steelmaking."

The US has lost a lot of primary steelmaking (relatively speaking) for
several reasons, but we've made out better overall by focusing on secondary
steelmaking, at least since the late '70s. The world is loaded with primary
steelmaking capacity and a lot of it is financed by the governments of
developing economies. How much of it makes sense in the US is the subject of
a large and continuing debate.

I used to cover the steel industry for _American Machinist_ back in the
'70s, and it was just as big an issue then. As the world changes (who would
have guessed, back in the '80s, that China's demand would explode so
quickly?), the equation changes. Most likely, we're better off focusing on
secondary steel and keeping no more primary steelmaking capacity than we can
run efficiently and economically.

Brent probably can give you a more detailed fix on this issue, but that's
the general situation.

Ed Huntress