China shrinking steel industry, but too slowly for West

FILE: Integrated steel mill in the Netherlands (Photo By Jesper Schoen – http://members.lycos.nl/fotoarchiefvon/hoogovens.JPG, CC BY 2.5)

BEIJING —  China’s steel mills, a target of U.S. 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.