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Cato Weekly Podcast • November 4, 2025 

# The $650,000 Question: How Steel Protectionism Fails 

For 60 years, the U.S. government has protected the steel industry through tariffs, quotas, and Buy American mandates. Yet steel costs remain among the highest globally, and protectionism has extracted a staggering price: $650,000 in economic damage for every steel job saved, and 75,000 manufacturing jobs lost in 2019 alone. Cato’s Clark Packard and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon investigate why protectionism failed and what market-based solutions would actually work.

#### Show Notes 

[![Steeled for Protectionism](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/content_teaser/public/2025-10/GettyImages-2207602942.jpg?itok=uM9-2BGe)](https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/steeled-protectionism) 

Study 

### [Steeled for Protectionism](/policy-analysis/steeled-protectionism) 

By [Clark Packard](https://www.cato.org/people/clark-packard) and [Alfredo Carrillo Obregon](https://www.cato.org/people/alfredo-carrillo-obregon) 

October 30, 2025 

For more than half a century, the steel industry has been one of the most protected sectors of the American economy, benefiting from an array of trade restrictions including quotas, tariffs, and aggressive trade remedies.

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

##### Featuring 

[![Clark Packard Square headshot](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2022-03/ClarkPackard_sq2.jpg?itok=6QwVlh1V)](/people/clark-packard) 

##### [Clark Packard](/people/clark-packard)

Research Fellow, Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute

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](https://x.com/clark_packard) [ 

](mailto:cpackard@cato.org) 

[![Alfredo Carrillo Obregon Cropped](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2026-05/Alfredo%20Carrillo%20Obregon%20Cropped.jpg?itok=KAEODEP0)](/people/alfredo-carrillo-obregon) 

##### [Alfredo Carrillo Obregon](/people/alfredo-carrillo-obregon)

Policy Analyst, Cato Institute

[ 

](https://x.com/AlfredCObregon)