America’s steelmakers were the big-tech firms of their day, at the corporate forefront in the 19th century as industrialisation led to rocketing demand. In 1901 ten industrial firms were combined to create us Steel, one of the world’s first billion-dollar corporations, and for the next 70 years business boomed for steelmakers boosted by rearmament in two world wars. Those heady days are long gone. Many firms such as us Steel, which smelt steel in blast furnaces from iron ore using coking coal, have either been bought or gone bust. Indeed, on August 13th Cleveland-Cliffs, an American competitor, said it had offered $7.3bn for us Steel,
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