At this point, the economy, and the steel market, took another lurch downwards.
In a strange new twist to the corporate drama that has been unfolding in the steel market, the United Steelworkers union is taking Esmark to arbitration to resolve their little spat over the sale of the company.
Most recently it has been eyeing the American steel market in the hope of taking advantage of the weak dollar.
The huge size of the Chinese industry now makes it a dominant force in both the global steel market and the market for production inputs such as iron ore and metallurgical coal.
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Mittal acquired Arcelor for 30bn euros in 2006, creating a firm with a 10% share of the world steel market.
Eventually the established steel mills ceded the rebar market to the minimills which gave them a boost to their stock and revenue, and so it felt good to get out of that market.
That forces the Cleveland mill to buy more costly steel on the open market.
The plant will build steel tubes for the energy market.
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USX, is only the world's 11th-largest steel maker, although America until recently was the world's largest steel market (China has now overtaken it).
Simply put, Ford would get into the iron-mining business if it were cheaper than buying steel on the open market.
However, as the restocking cycle came to an end, demand declined creating an oversupply of steel in the market.
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Investors looking to ride these coattails might want to check out the Market Vectors Steel ETF ( SLX).
The Market Vectors Steel (amex: SLX) exchange-traded fund, for example, has enjoyed a gain of more than 40% since the start of 2009.
This pattern continued over the years of the minimills innovating and moving upmarket while the old steel mills ceded the lower ends of the market, because it made financial sense to them to cede those markets.
But since the biggest Chinese steelmaker, Baosteel, had only a 6% share of its home market (Nippon Steel, by contrast, controlled a third of the Japanese market), it lacked the bargaining power for negotiations behind closed doors.
Vale is seeing some of its market share erode as other local steel producers get in on the iron ore market.
The glut of iron ore developing in the international market is good news for steel consumers such as car makers and builders but will hit the profits of BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Vale, the big three of the seaborne iron ore trade.
The stock market currently is focused on new stents being developed by Guidant (nyse: GDT - news - people ) and Medtronic (nyse: MDT - news - people ), but these stents are based on the same idea as those that are currently on the market: They are made of steel, coated with a polymer.
This is because, even by the standards of the industry, Europe's steel market is opaque and inefficient.
Skip forward to today's list of the 100 largest companies. (This and the intervening lists are by market value, not assets.) Steel has vanished from the roster.
Lower-cost foreign steel makers have a quarter of the American market.
The rise in housing starts since the market bottomed last year "means more demand for construction equipment and steel and lumber and other materials that we haul, " Mr. Tennant said.
Over the past 25 years, steel from domestic mini-mills has taken far more of the integrated giants' market share than have foreigners.
The World Steel Association, a steelmakers' group, predicted early this month that the iron-ore market should stay balanced this year before moving into progressive surplus between 2014 and 2017 as new mine capacity comes on stream.
The bull market hasn't been kind to steel stocks, but Rouge has done worse than most.
The M100 also pushed hard into a couple exchange-traded funds, including Market Vectors Steel (amex: SLX - news - people ), which tracks the AMEX Steel Index.
By the end of the decade, Gerdau's market share in long steel was approximately 40%, and Brazil's antitrust regulators were making it harder for Gerdau to acquire more.
Art's cognoscenti assemble again tonight, for an auction at Sotheby's that Pollock says could give even firmer confirmation that the art market remains Teflon among so much cheap creditless steel.
And Chinese steel mills have been forced to make purchases on the spot market.
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