US Steel this week announced it would be restarting its hot strip mills in Gary, Indiana and Granite City, Illinois at far less than full capacity while further announcing it would be "permanently"1 shuttering its tubular products operations in Lorain, Ohio and Lone Star, Texas. The mixed messages seem to result from an anticipated increase in demand for domestic steel in the US sufficient to start warming up the machinery as a result of Trumpreich trade policies, though the shifting policies are not anticipated to be enough to justify making finished pipe while oil prices continue to sit in the shitter.
For a peculiar definition of "permanently" used in US Steel's contract with the United Steelworkers. ↩