“Steel Stocks Put the Pedal to the Metal” the Wall Street Journal declared within hours of Donald Trump’s election victory. Shares of U.S. Steel, Nucor, and Steel Dynamics all surged the moment trading opened. It was an eerie, almost exact replay of what had happened after Trump’s surprise win eight years earlier. Then as now, investors stampeded into those same steel companies, hopeful that deliverance had finally come to a Rust Belt industry in distress.
But what happened last time around is a warning for investors, business leaders, and the incoming Trump administration. Those steel stocks that jumped so encouragingly eight years ago continued to rocket for a while; U.S. Steel’s shares more than doubled. Yet within three years, with new steel tariffs in place, America’s major steel stocks had lost all their gains and were trading below where they had been before the election.
