A sharp fall in world demand
The steel crisis exists and is getting worse in every respectorders, costs, profits." So said Viscount Etienne Davignon, the European Community industrial affairs commissioner. Other leading industrial nations are also feeling the worldwide steel crisis. The U.S. last month reintroduced the trigger price mechanism to protect the domestic industry against cheap imports that were undercutting U.S. prices. American steel output in the first ten months of the year was 22% below the same level of 1979, and the industry has laid off 86,000 steel-production workers, almost one-quarter of its...