Not on a rolling schedule a week away, or on a truck somewhere. And the third element of availability is, of course, price. Because we've been there, done that. History tells us what happens when the steel market tightens. Three things happen.
Prices go up, delivery lead times lengthen and quality deteriorates.
We know that restraints on steel imports during the 1980s and early 1990s hurt the American economy. The U.S. International Trade Commission found that quotas increase imports of steel-containing products, costing U.S. companies billions of dollars in sales. Quotas today would do the same. For several reasons, the U.S. is a net steel-importing nation. At current levels of demand in this country, U.S. steel producers cannot supply more than about 75 percent of our needs, leaving a shortfall of about 30 million tons.