As the manufacturing casualties of the 1983 recession began to mount, Donald Barnett, Chief Economist at the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) made the prediction that the United States integrated steel industry would either “continue to perform poorly, with bankruptcies and facility closures, or it will restructure radically, boosting productivity in order to regain international competitiveness” (1983, 283). Paradoxically, more than two decades later Barnett’s prophecy turned out to be both right and wrong. In the first few years of the 21st Century the American steel industry was more efficient, cost-effective, technologically sophisticated and productive then it had
been in almost a century (AISI Reports 2002; World Steel Dynamics Steel Strategist #26, 2002; Mangum and McNabb 1997), but it was also “on the brink of collapse” (Steel Labor 2001, 15).