93% of North American steel produced each year is from recycled products [1], and 98% of products are recycled [2]. There is no reason to use either iron ore or coke for steel production when the vast majority of it is produced in electric arc furnaces from scrap steel. It's better economically and better environmentally.
This is also why Nucor has been eating U.S. Steel's lunch for about 50 years, long before China entered the steelmaking business.
[1] https://cssbi.ca/mid-rise-construction/sustainable-steel
Efficiencies of scale achieved by megamills cannot be achieved by small in-situ smelters, simple economics
Is there any way we can build them domestically again?
2. Nickel
3. Fertiliser https://static.nationmaster.com/assets/1ccceff/charts/rankin...
4. Non-ferrous alloys
5. Machinery parts, especially consumables like things (i.e. electrodes)
6. Powerplant machinery
7. Electrical distribution equipment, especially transformers
8. Merchant marine (even tiny Greece is ahead of US)
9. Shipbuilding, and naval engineering at large
10. Railways equipment, and vehicles
11. Pharma, with medical consumables, antibiotics, and other essential medicines in particular
12. Heavy industry in general
13. Chromium
14. Manganese
15. Vanadium
16. Chemical catalysts
17. Cobalt
America has much less key industries than China has. Any discussions about microchips are silly when much bigger elephants in the room are not talked about.
https://www.steel.org/2021/07/steel-imports-up-18-5-year-to-...
America is dangerously dependent on imported steel — all at the same time while having the best iron ore deposits, and coke deposits, and cheap energy.
Now, prepare for a total despair if you haven't seen this graph before:
https://thephillypi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/162277872...
The situation across dozens more key industries is equally dire.