The crisis in the British steel industry risks becoming a "death spiral", according to Angela Eagle, business spokeswoman for the country's opposition Labour Party.
Her bleak warning came during a parliamentary debate on the lengthening list of British steel plant closures and redundancies, which have claimed around one-sixth of the steel workforce over the last six months.
The country's steel production dropped by 10.4 percent last year.
This is not just a British problem.
Steel production is falling just about everywhere. Of the top 10 national producers only one, India, raised production last year, according to the World Steel Association.
And everyone knows what the problem is.
China.
The country stands accused of dumping steel onto world markets, depressing prices and triggering plant closures.
A backlash of trade complaints and anti-dumping duties is building.
In Europe, debate is raging about whether to grant China market economy status, a move critics claim will make it harder to impose the sort of anti-dumping duties just levied on Chinese reinforcing bar (rebar).
"Most of the EU steel industry may disappear," warned Axel Eggert, director general of EU steel industry body Eurofer.
But, ironically, China itself is suffering from its own previous steel excess just as much as anyone else.
Indeed, restructuring the steel sector is going to be a key test of Beijing's ability to re-engineer its economy away from the old fixed-asset-investment model toward a more consumerist version.
The scale of the task mirrors the scale of the steel monster that years of unbridled investment have spawned.
Reuters