Self-harm alert: Trump’s ‘man of steel’ ambitions will make America grate again
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. If you want to reduce international trade and foreign relations to chest-beating displays of dominance, sooner or later you’re going to end up fighting about steel. Hard, unbending, corrosion-resistant and essential to making macho artefacts like skyscrapers, cars and armaments, the metal is associated with images of strength.
US President Donald Trump echoed that imagery in a photoshopped image last year showing himself as Superman, the ‘Man of Steel,’ on his Truth Social account. Other autocratic leaders have had the same idea. Georgian revolutionary Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili chose the Russian word for steel when he came up with the name by which he is best-known: Stalin.
When Fascist Italy struck a military alliance with Nazi Germany three months before the start of World War II, Mussolini dubbed it the “pact of steel." Make no mistake, however: Trying to protect the US steel and aluminium industries for nation-building is a doomed project that will make America weaker. Tariffs of 25% on imported metal that Trump promised to unveil will be as ineffective in fostering domestic production as his 2018 round of restrictions. Since those actions, US production capacity for aluminium has fallen by 32%, while steel is down 3.6%.
Why expect a different result? If the latest round of levies is actually introduced—it’s anyone’s guess, given the frantic policy to-and-fro—they’ll serve only to damage producers and consumers in both the US and its allies. The knock-on outcome will diminish those countries’ ability to make their own metal. Russia and China must be rubbing their hands with glee.
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