Dofasco is an equity investor in E-Steel. He wondered whether steel could do better this century. Steel must be envious of the aluminum and oil industries, Graham said. The top-ten aluminum and oil producers account for half of those industries' production, while the ten largest steel producers in the world account for only 22 percent of steel producers. There are 100 million tons of excess steel capacity in the world, Graham said.
Trade disputes are merely symptoms of overcapacity.
Graham noted that efforts to privatize the industry have increased. Some of this went toward subsidizing Hanbo Steel, the South Korean steel company whose executives were accused of corruption in the company's financing. Things were going so great, and people were spending like there's no tomorrow. In 1998, we went into detox. To not let that happen, you must get with the steelmakers and talk about the impact the product has on their operations.