It is an interesting narrative but largely untrue. As the article points out, US Steel (and the US steel industry in general) was making enough profit, what they were not doing was re-investing those profits into upgrading their steel making. Instead, the "People in Charge" were giving themselves large bonuses and pay upgrades for being bosses of the "big steel." This was especially true through the 80's and 90's in a post "stagflation" atmosphere a lot of industry became more focused on executive pay than product production. The poster child was the auto industry "forgetting" how to make quality cars. They didn't forget of course, they just focused more on shoveling money into the C-suite and less on actually building a quality product. The massive erosion of the car market to Japanese automakers was a direct result of that shift of thinking.