At first, I thought it was one of these sci-fi concepts that governments talk about but never execute. But they are doing the project (although they have scaled it down considerably). Have nothing to say really.
> https://www.statista.com/statistics/650538/leading-steel-imp...
Such a massive import scheme would probably disrupt global steel markets and lead to a price surge, which is not in evidence. If anything, steel prices have decreased over 2024:
> https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/steel
So I don't know how much they're using, but I think we can safely rule out that they're really utilizing anything like 1/5 of global annual production.
Already importing more than a billion tonnes of raw meterial in order to make steel - they have the logistics to move weight and they're not importing steel they're importing iron ore and metallurgical coal to make it and use it.
They're glutting with steel about now and in the near future, their massive city scale housing developments have come to an end and are possibly looking to sell their ongoing production to the Saudi's.
I believe the plan is to build the first 2km as a test. Which is still 500m high so just nuts.
The project Corviale in Rome is 1km long as a reference.
So many people said this would be BS and they were right. The 1% remaining is a face saving gesture.
It has been massively scaled down to realistic proportions since, as expected.