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World steel production has grown dramatically as
countriesindustrialize and add their own steel-producing capacity.
China'sprodigious expansion of steel output has increased
theindustry's natural vulnerability to oversupply and volatile
prices.And the merger of the two largest steelmakers, Arcelor and
Mittal,portends consolidation as a prime strategy for
diversification andstabilization. This book examines the
competition and survivalstrategies of the integrated steel industry
from various vantage pointsincluding cost structures and
technology, export pricing strategies,the economics of trade
protection, Paul Krugman's NobelPrize-winning explanation of
industrial diffusion and trade, and theprospects of cooperating
closely with automakers. The industry'sfuture, Big Steel shows, is
cosmopolitan.
Presented in a straightforward, non-technical manner, this book
describes how one strategic industry has adapted to powerful
technological and structural changes, ushering in a new phase in
the global steel business.--Daniel Madar is a professor of
political science at Brock University and the author of Heavy
Traffic: Deregulation, Trade, and Transformation in North American
Trucking.--"Big Steel explores an industry that has been in near
continual transformation for a generation or more and captures the
shape and structure of these changes. Perhaps even more
significantly, it makes the case that developments in the new
millennium denote a new phase in the global steel business, which
portends even more dramatic changes of behaviour and performance."
- Peter Clancy, author, Micro-Politics and Canadian Business:
Paper, Steel and the Airlines.
Canada and the United States exchange the world's highest level of
bilateral trade, valued at $1.4 billion a day. Two-thirds of this
trade travels on trucks. Heavy Traffic examines the way in which
the regulatory reform of American and Canadian trucking, coupled
with free trade, has internationalized this vital industry. Before
deregulation, restrictive entry rules had fostered two separate
national highway transportation markets, and most international
traffic had to be exchanged at the border. When the United States
deregulated first, the imbalance between its opened market and
Canada's still-restricted one produced a surprisingly difficult
bilateral dispute. American deregulation was motivated by domestic
incentives, but the subsequent Canadian deregulation blended
domestic incentives with transborder rate comparisons and concerns
about trade competitiveness. Daniel Madar shows that deregulation
created a de facto regime of free trade in trucking services.
Removing regulatory barriers has enabled Canadian and American
carriers to follow the expansion of transborder traffic that began
with the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and continues with NAFTA.
The services available with deregulated trucking have also
supported sweeping changes in industrial logistics. As transborder
traffic has surged, the two countries' carriers - from
billion-dollar corporations to family firms - have exploited the
latitude provided by deregulation. This book is a valuable
contribution to our understanding of the policy processes and
economic conditions that led to trucking deregulation. As a study
in public policy formation and the international effects of reform,
it will be of interest to students and scholars of political
economy, international relations, and transportation.
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