Trump chose steel for symbolic reasons. It’s key to the America of 1950-1960, which he thinks we should become again. That’s what MAGA means, what ‘Take America Back’ means, that we become once again the industrial powerhouse, digging coal, making steel, building ships - these are literally the industries he and Bannon talked about. Why? They’re MANLY! Big, strong (and almost exclusively white) men, doing big dangerous jobs!

And for this vision of Days Of The Future Past, he wants to give up the actual future, in green energy, sustainability, information technology. He’s trying to re-create a mid 20th Century country in the 21st century. EVEN IF we could re-establish the steel mill economy of the 1950s in America, who’d buy our steel at the prices we’d have to charge?