This piece originally appeared in Commonplace.
On Saturday, April 12, British MPs were called into Parliament for an emergency vote for the first time since the Falklands war in 1982. Amid accusations of “industrial vandalism,” the government authorized temporary powers to prevent the collapse of British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant, the only primary steelmaking company in the United Kingdom. Despite this show of urgency, the slow disintegration of British Steel has been as predictable as it has been damaging. In the last five years, Britain has seen the consequences of allowing foreign firms to purchase critical industrial capacity. There’s a lesson for America, too.
Steel manufacturing in Scunthorpe, a town in northern England, began in the late 19th century. Through a series of mergers, nationalization, and eventual privatization, the Scunthorpe plant and other industrial assets came under control of British Steel in 1988. Further sales and purchases of the firm led to its acquisition in 2020 by Jingye Group, a major Chinese steelmaker.
The deal was initially praised by Boris Johnson’s government. The Prime Minister himself said, “as British Steel takes its next steps under Jingye’s leadership, we can be sure these [steps] will ring out for decades to come.” His Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, described it as “the start of a new era for those regions that have built their livelihoods around industrial steel production.” Looking for a win, the government mistook Chinese investment for a guarantee that British steelmaking would modernize. However, they were right about one thing: This is a new era, one of asymmetric economic warfare—and Britain is losing.
