There's reason to think so, at least in the case of Europe and the United States, where they are accompanied by promises that are always similar - not to close sites or relocate production - and in reality rarely tenable.

They also always provoke the same political hysteria, as witnessed by the fierce bi-partisan opposition to Nippon Steel's takeover of US Steel. Yesterday, Kamala Harris joined Donald Trump in his stance.

Yet Nippon is placing a very generous premium on US Steel's valuation. Its offer is more than half that made by Cleveland-Cliffs a few months earlier. Independently quoted, US Steel commanded a valuation of $5 billion. Nippon, on the other hand, is prepared to pay $12.1 billion.

The Pittsburg-based group is only the world's twenty-fourth largest producer, behind its compatriots Nucor and Cleveland-Cliffs. Proof of its decline and structural uncompetitiveness in the face of Asian competition, at the dawn of the 2008 financial crisis, it was the world's eighth-largest producer.

Nippon Steel, for its part, has been the world's fourth-largest producer since its merger with Sumitomo Metal. The Japanese company would provide the American company with outlets and financial resources it would never find elsewhere. The $2.7 billion it proposed to invest directly in modernization, for example, represents more than three years of US Steel's last operating profit.

Undergoing continuous restructuring for ten years - or should we say forever? for ever - the American group has not escaped the fate of other Western steelmakers, trapped as it remains by inadequate profitability and a chronic inability to adapt to changing market conditions. and a chronic inability to generate sufficient free cash flow to pay shareholders on a regular basis.

Although uneven, Nippon Steel's record of profitability is considerably better. The group has kept its debt under control and distributed $1.9 billion in dividends to its shareholders over the last three years.

In the long term, however, its value-creation performance has been mediocre. Proof of this is the fact that its share price is at the same level today as it was fifteen years ago, and that dividend distributions only resumed in 2017.

In any case, the race for scale and consolidation continues in the steel industry. Mergers and acquisitions are well underway in Asia, which has long since become the epicenter of global steel production.

After its failed attempt to acquire US Steel, Cleveland-Cliffs this summer set its sights on Canada's Stelco. In Europe, businessman Daniel Křetínský is positioning himself to buy ThyssenKrupp's steel assets.

These developments are taking place against a worrying backdrop. The global economy is slowing down and the Chinese construction sector has entered a veritable nuclear winter. These factors have rekindled fears that Chinese producers may be aggressively dumping their products on international markets, something they had already been doing when times were better.

Against this backdrop, the takeover of US Steel was probably the happiest thing that could have happened.