Over the past 12 months the US government have put stringent tariffs onto all imported steel and aluminium. This was done to help the US manufacturing industry by producing more home produced metals.
The idea behind this is good, but the practicality and economics is not.
Some to the metals producers within the USA do not have the raw materials to sustain manufacturing of steel and aluminium. Therefore, they must import raw materials, either as scrap or in many cases slab from sister companies worldwide.
For example, a steel producer in southern USA imports the majority of slab from their sister company in Brazil. Because of the high import tariff, the finished steel price is extremely high, which in turn drives up the price of all steel and the finished products such as vehicles etc.
In some cases specialist steels such as Cor-ten (weathering steel, used in shipping containers and roofing products) is not manufactured in high enough quantities within the US market, so is imported from countries such as Sweden. Again pushing up the price of the finished product.
In this case, a number of container manufacturers within the USA have closed.
Because the cost of US produced steel is so high, it is cheaper (even with the tariff on imported containers) to import the finished product from China and Korea.
As China, India etc. have invested in NEW modern manufacturing plants and techniques (mainly from European OEM's), the quality of steel and aluminium from these countries has become very high.
Instead of the US imposing high tariff's on imported materials. Maybe, an investment strategy of upgrading and modernizing the 30-50 year old equipment in many plants, would improve the quality of finished products and make the US steel and aluminium industry competitive again within in the world market.