Steel is central to a vibrant national industrial base, and coal is essential to that steel manufacturing. As the DOE notes: “coal is essential to steel manufacturing and steel is an essential part of all energy systems in the US. Without coal used in steel-making there would be no power plants, electric transmission towers, pipelines, wells, or storage facilities. However, this is only a subset of the industries that should be considered when evaluating the criticality of steel and metallurgical coal.”
Here is the reality: “Steel is one of the world’s most essential materials. It is fundamental to every aspect of our lives, from infrastructure and transport to the humble tin-plated steel can that preserves food. With steel, we can create huge buildings or tiny parts for precision instruments. It is strong, versatile and infinitely recyclable.”
China and India are the world’s low cost manufacturers of steel, putting US industrial manufacturers at a distinct disadvantage because of steel’s place as a basic raw material to most machinery manufacturing. They have achieved this through government subsidies and tariff protection, technological prowess, and other factors (see here). They have also lacked the demonization of coal by Net Zero advocates.
Low cost electricity is also key to industrial dominance, and here too coal is important to China and India’s success. Here is the reality of coal’s place in low cost electric generation, despite a mainstream Western media largely captured by the Net Zero agenda:
Regarding solar and wind, its unreliability drives up electric costs, as demonstrated in the relation between cost of electric and % converted to them:
https://nypost.com/2025/05/07/opinion/cheap-solar-and-wind-is-a-lie-green-countries-pay-more/
Reliable, cheap electric is especially important in an age when AI data center capacity will be a major factor in the competition with China and India.
The USA simply cannot afford to be hamstrung by the Net Zero agenda. The “Save The Campbell” effort thus is a political battle to fight for the USA in its economic competition with China and India.