How do you fuck up steel? Something every country needs for infrastructure and construction.
China’s been producing a very great deal of it in recent years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production
The biggest steel producing country is currently China, which accounted for 54% of world steel production in 2023.
Historically, the UK had access to coal and was an early starter on a lot of industrialization stuff. Today, other countries have industrialized too.
From the Wikipedia page:
Entity 2024 million metric tons production 1967 million metric tons production World 1,881.4 497.2 China 1,005.1 14.0 UK 4.0 24.3 It’s not that nobody needs it, but rather that there’s a global market for steel, and that there’s a question of who has comparative advantage in doing so.
This sounds like a reasonable case for protectionary tariffs
Well, could be.
I think that it’s fair to say that the UK probably wants to maintain reliable access to steel.
But there are multiple routes for that. Hedging against risk costs something, and it’s not possible to hedge against everything. Have to pick what risks to deal with.
Another possibility is that the UK “friendshores” – like, okay, say that the UK decides that, I don’t know, some set of specific countries having capacity is sufficient, that any scenario where they’re trying to cut the UK off (or someone else is able to cut transport to them off a la the Battle of the Atlantic) probably has larger problems for the UK than just steel access. I suspect that if you go looking, you could find all kinds of supply chains that aren’t purely British domestic that would be important — hard to do everything domestically. Could even sign some sort of treaty obligating the UK to have some guaranteed amount of access with said countries (though that might also entail some sort of commitments on the British side to provide things themselves).
Or it could be possible to maintain a strategic reserve of steel long enough to last out a period of shortage, until other counters could be employed.
Or it could be that the UK does want domestic capacity, but feels that the existing British capacity outside of this facility is adequate for national security.
Or it could be that the UK feels that in an emergency, they or someone else could adequately ramp up production.
Or it could be that the UK would like to provide some form of protectionism, but doesn’t want to use tariffs (e.g. they use government procurement to ensure a certain amount of sustained domestic demand).
Or it could be that the UK feels that they can deter parties from cutting them off. Like, okay, maybe one could imagine a scenario where steel to the UK were cut off, or at least reduced…but then that party would suffer consequences of their own, lose access to things that the UK provides or can otherwise deny, that might also be critical to that other party.
kagis
I have no familiarity with the situation, so I can’t comment on it, but this document from last month by the current government seems to detail a variety of measures regarding support for the British steel industry:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pathway-to-the-launch-of-the-steel-strategy
It sounds like there’s going to be at least some guaranteed government procurement from domestic industry in there, for example.
