A prominent journalist wrote in 1947: "The basic power determinant of any country is its steel production, and what makes this a great nation above all is the fact that it can roll over 90 million tons of steel ingots a year, more than Great Britain, prewar Germany, Japan, France, and the Soviet Union combined ." Well, that was then. In 2005 the United States ranked third in raw steel production. Its output (95 million metric tons) was behind Japan's (113 million tons) and less than a third of China's (349 million).
The Washington Post