The steel industry provides about 5% of the total U.S. manufacturing GDP. The industry has undergone a major transformation since its recession of the late 1980s, investing in new process and product technologies and closing older mills. Today’s steel industry is technologically sophisticated, employing more than 150,000 American production workers in jobs paying about 50% above the average for all U.S. manufacturing [AISI and SMA 1998]. The industry creates an additional 50,000 jobs for downstream processing.

The United States is the largest steel producer in the world, producing 107 million tons of raw steel in 1998, nearly 13% of total world production [Iron & Steelmaker 1999]. The industry has recently experienced large levels of imports because of world steel overcapacity resulting from economic downturns in Asia and the CIS. However, the industry’s return on sales for both 1997 and 1998 approached 3% [AISI 1999a].

The steel industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on R&D. Over the last 20 years, the industry has invested nearly $7 billion in environmental control equipment.