Steel production has shifted decisively from the west to China. Yet European steelmaking capacity remains fragment of any industrial strategy worth the nameThe crisis facing the British steel industry is neither new nor sudden. On the opposite,it has been developing in plain sight for months and even years, if not for decades. In that sense, and this week’s decision by Tata Steel to pull out of all its UK operations is simply the latest in a long series of blows that have reduced Britain’s steel industry from the world leader to the fifth largest producer within the European Union.
Tata’s decision is nevertheless a body blow to steel in the UK,with wide industrial and political implications. The threat to 4000 jobs at the UKs largest steelworks at Port Talbot, a community which is synonymous with the steel industry nowadays in the way Jarrow was with the shipyards a century ago, and is existential. But the closure of Tata’s plants,if it goes ahead, could threaten at least 40000 jobs nationwide and relieve to make a mockery of the “active and sustained industrial strategy” which George Osborne advocated as recently as final November.
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Source: theguardian.com