Robert Sterling
@RobertMSterling
THREAD: Here's what a dive bar in Memphis taught me about tariffs, global trade, and domestic manufacturing.

(Yes, I'm being serious.)

Let's talk about why it's so hard to produce things in America, what it means for our country, and what we can do about it 🧵👇 //

If you build a steel mill in America, your billion-dollar asset is going to have hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment from companies like SMS (Germany) or Danieli (Italy). Like it or not, most of your critical infrastructure is coming over on boats from Europe.

You see, when we imported all that equipment from Germany, we didn't just have to import machinery. We also had to import the engineers to install it, configure it, and get it all working. By the hundreds.

America simply doesn't have the engineering know-how to do this anymore.

That's the salt in the wound of deindustrialization. You don't just lose the supply chains and the production footprints and the middle-class jobs and the local tax revenue.

You also lose the knowledge. You lose the skilled labor.

And it's almost impossible to get it back.

Robert Sterling
@RobertMSterling
·
Apr 3
Over the past 35 years, China went from a smaller steel industry than the US to producing more steel than the rest of the world combined.

We still make steel in America, and we make really good steel.

It would be nice if we could once again make the things that make the steel.