The steel industry, having entered the recession in the best of health, is emerging as a leading indicator of what lies ahead. As steel production goes, and it is now in collapse, so will go the national economy.That maxim once applied to the Big Three car companies. Now they are losing ground in good times and bad, and steel has replaced autos as the industry to watch for an early sign that a severe recession is beginning to lift.
The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the collapse, came from manufacturers and builders.
Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Obama's stimulus plan and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program -- up to $1 trillion over two years -- that will lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, power grids, schools, hospitals, water-treatment plants and rapid transit.
"What we are asking," said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and CEO of Nucor, a giant steelmaker with a Seattle plant, "is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a 'buy America' clause."