Steel is a red herring, like most manufacturing, it's designed as a vote catcher for older people who lived at a time when we were good at manufacturing, and most of the world had a lesser capability. That world doesn't exist anymore.
This applies to most manufacturing:
We can't make steel as cheap as China or many other places, as our workers cost too much for fair pay, as does the cost of mining the raw materials. It's cheaper to get it from abroad, and ship it, and that's impossible to fight.
Sure, we could tax imports more, to disincentivise it, but the costs here would still be expensive, so the manufacturing cost would go up, which means costs for anything related to it go up, which means the man on the street ends up paying a lot more for it (inflation).
Sure, there was a time when it was cheaper because it was worse quality, but the world has caught up and places like China are probably now making better gear than we ever did, or they could if people asked for it. Some places might ask for the best gear, but most general construction wouldn't, they want whatever will do the job well enough (which is already overengineered with safety margins), at the cheapest price possible.
Can't fight the world economy, and countries developing, with lower wage and material costs, and they're always going to start with raw materials, manufacturing, labour intensive roles etc, and pull the rug from others who were the top of that. This is why countries have to move with the times, like how the UK moved to finance, insurance, services and digital aspects etc. Going back to manufacturing would be a backwards step, we need to be looking at what's required in the future, which developing economies would struggle to do as quickly, with experience etc.
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