Michael Siegal0:08
So the steel industry itself is part of a bigger fabric of manufacturing sectors. We make steel from either dirt or from scrap, right? So it's 100% recyclable in many cases. I think though, over the years, we've been naive by the aspect of global growth and particularly China. China and the United States produced the same amount of steel in 2001, and now China makes ten times the amount of steel that we do here in the United States. So we've been inundated over the years with unfairly traded imports, not only imports in raw steel but of products that are made of steel. So when Sam Walton created Walmart, it was everyday lowest price, excuse me, it was made in the USA. That's where Walmart was in its creation, Sam Walton, made in the USA. After he dies, it's converted to some other younger, brighter thinkers in its everyday lowest price. So I think we have been at an economic war on the industrial base. I think China has unfairly traded many of the aspects that have hurt our ability to take undereducated individuals and allow them to have a productive life in industry. So I think people have started to realize that if we don't have trade schools and people who can actually have skills coming out of our high schools and our community colleges, we can't all just be service. Somebody has to make something, somebody has to fix something. So I think, as with any pendulum that has gone too far in one direction, the pendulum is starting to swing back, but very slowly coming back from where it was.
The question is about Cleveland's economy. Certainly the overall economy is better. Cleveland has transitioned from a major industrial town to basically a medical town, and kudos to the Cleveland Clinic. But to some degree, as somebody who has grown up in the industrial sector, I'm not a big believer in the service economy. The service economy is trading the same dollar over and over again and not really generating GDP growth. So I think to a great degree, we have to understand that Cleveland's foundation is still an industrial base. The city itself has a strong connection to football and its industrial history, whether it's steel or mining, whether it's salt mining or other kinds of mining or iron ore from the Cliffs standpoint. I think we have to understand that somebody has to create energy and jobs, and that job isn't always from a service perspective. It is from actually making things from the earth. Cleveland can do well in the service economy, as it has done in transitioning to a lot of medical opportunities, but I do think that we're in kind of a renaissance in real estate. But people really need to understand that basic industry is still part of the fabric of Cleveland, Ohio.
