When Suzanne Folsom came in as general counsel of U.S. Steel in 2014, she joined an industry that, she says, “has been managing its decline for a long time.” From there she started a campaign to educate government officials and the public of the national security concerns presented by a country without domestic steel manufacturing. And she spent millions of dollars and countless hours of strategy work developing a litigation approach to combat hacking of trade secrets and alleged illegal dumping—that is, foreign steelmakers selling steel for prices that Folsom and others argue undercut U.S. manufacturers and violate international trade laws.
The U.S. steel industry, once a bastion of American wealth from its formation by the likes of Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, has in more recent years seen bankruptcies and consolidation. Which may account for why the bulk of the union workforce of the largest steel manufacturer, U.S. Steel, parted ways with the Democratic party and voted for Donald Trump in November, Folsom notes.
