China's steel mills, a target of US President Donald Trump's ire, are their industry's 800-pound gorilla: They supply half of world output, so every move they make has a global impact. Trump responded last week with a blanket tariff hike on steel and aluminum, another metal China's trading partners complain it oversupplies. The steel industry swelled over the past decade to support a history-making Chinese construction boom.
Once that tailed off, the country was left with a glut of half-idle, money-losing mills. Beijing has closed mills and eliminated 1 million jobs but is moving too slowly to defuse American and European anger at a flood of low-cost exports that is double the volume of second-place Japan. China says it shut down 30 million tons of capacity last year.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU