From Chokepoints to Global Flows: The Political Economy of the U.S. Steel Crisis and the Restructuring of Extraction

Bradley Castiglia, University of Michigan

This paper argues that the collapse of American steel was not a spontaneous economic outcome but the result of a reorganization of sovereignty that dismantled the Fordist social order, which had previously joined industry and labor in a state-mediated compromise that underpinned midcentury accumulation. Centered in the Great Lakes, this order rested upon Congress and its committee system, which mediated sectoral demands and authorized interventions (e.g., procurement, quotas, price controls) implemented through the executive branch to stabilize investment, wages, and industrial capacity within a managed system of competition. Over time, however, the institutional foundations of the Fordist compromise eroded as sovereign authority shifted from Congress to the U.S. President and the Federal Reserve. Rather than securing the long-term profitability of domestic cartels, economic governance came to prioritize monetary stability and capital mobility, as the mid-century order of congressional compromise and managed competition gave way to one defined by monetary credibility and market discipline. The steel crises of the 1970s and 1980s marked this transition in sharp relief, as repeated interventions no longer aimed to sustain domestic cartels or protect productive capacity. Instead, policy emphasized price stability and financial openness, leaving industries like steel vulnerable to volatility and contraction. The resulting deindustrialization of the Great Lakes was not simply the outcome of global competition or technological change but the consequence of a deeper reorganization of state–capital–labor relations. By reframing neoliberalization as the political reconstitution of the American social order, rather than the delayed triumph of a free-market ideology, this paper highlights the state’s central role in dismantling the Fordist compromise and building a new order organized around monetary credibility and market discipline. It thereby establishes a framework for future work on how shifting configurations of sovereignty reshape the institutional settlement linking state authority, economic elites, and labor to the American polity.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 165. Workers and Work Transformations into the 21st Century