Look at Germany and Japan and how much they pay for labor and tell me how they can have all kinds of manufacturing and we can't. The steel making areas in the US (my city included) used to be poluted as hell, these days Chinese cities are like that and worse. The EPA made it so the air is mostly breathable and local rivers don't catch on fire anymore.
The US steel industry didn't put much money into keeping their plants modern after WW2 and suffered from it causing the great restructuring. These days the plants seem to specialize and make some money but are nowhere near the size they used to be when supplying the whole world with steel.
I also noticed quite a few chemical/steel plants are foreign owned and they do invest money into their facilities. Investers based in the US would rather pump and dump companies instead of the hard job of keeping them profitable long term.
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