One thing you should bear in mind. Steel manufacture is a very high fixed costs business. Around 80% fixed in fact, which means that if demand falls below 90 % of capacity , the business makes a huge loss. If its full to the brim it makes a huge profit.
When I left university and joined the steel industry, the 13 existing british companies were being nationalised. Of those 13 only one, the United Steel Companies, was making a small profit. The rest were loss making and one of them was so much a loss maker that the government hadnt succeeded in selling it off in the previous de- nationalisation.
In my time in the industry we had periods of high demand and huge profits. We also had periods of low demand and losses of over a million per day. We also went down from over 200, 000 employees ot 35000 without dropping a tonne of output.
This pattern of huge losses and huge profits doesnt sit at all well with a capitalist market economy as we are now seeing.
