If the "little bird" is correct, it could signal the weakness of the business plan to ship billets by diesel locomotive driven trains from Peoria, Illinois to Georgetown SC to be made into wire. The problems with it are that (a) as Henry Ford might agree, it is a very inefficient way to set up an industrial production line, (2) the cost to loading, transporting and unloading the billets is expensive, (3) the expense increases with the price of diesel fuel, (4) it leaves the final product to be transported from the Atlantic coast around the country rather than from the middle of the country in Illinois, increasing the cost of doing so for any customers closer to Illinois than South Carolina, (5) and it occurs in a market in which the tariffs imposed on some cheaper imported steel have be eased or removed. If any of that is true, the "little bird" may well be a chicken that has come home to roost.
I am very sympathetic to workers at the mill. I support the notion that they, and all workers, deserve to be treated fairly and respectfully, paid a living wage and protected against any form of exploitation or manipulation. Whether that has been the case here or not will become clear soon enough. Economic reality is, like gravity, a force of nature.
