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one has to ask why no stateside spcialty steel maker doesn't sell the required item.

I think the Japan Railway Journal show had an episode on UP and the Japanese high quality long lasting rail they import. You might be able to find that on YouTube. The Japanese company own the property rights to the patents they have and are the only plant in the world that makes it from what I heard on that episode.

It is the same with the special blade steel for the cutters on printing machines, the company owns patents and thus the private property rights to their invention. They built a plant in the US, based on American principles and laws that once promoted and encouraged mutually beneficial "free trade". Now that we have a government that no longer adheres to the principles of free markets and free trade, and they can no longer import raw materials at a cost that would allow them to operate at a profit in the US, they may be forced to shut down manufacturing operations in the US.

In America, persons are guaranteed equal protection under the law, and have a right to be secure in their property. There is nothing preventing a US company from licensing the Japanese technology, if they are willing. There is nothing to prevent a US steel maker from developing their own high strength steel rail, if they think they can make a profit doing it.

No Japanese government or corporate official is pointing a gun at the UP and forcing them to buy the high strength rails from Japan. No one is forcing you or anyone else to buy anything you don't want under our open and free market system. The UP looked at competing products from around the world, and liked the fact that these rails wear better and last longer, costing the UP less in track wear and maintenance costs, and UP chose "freely" to buy this product, to be more efficient and make a profit.

Now, however, we do have "our" US government "pointing a gun at UP" and telling the UP what products they must buy, by levying a punitive "tax" on the UP for making a free market business decision to make a profit by providing transportation services to their customers using the best and most efficient technology available to them.

This is not a sensible trade policy, because you are right, it makes no sense. It's more like a form of crude political "shakedown economics". The kind of economic "policies" you might find in a third world kleptocracy or dictatorship, kind of like Russia, in a system of government based on the idea of a "government of, by, and for" the thieves at the top, instead of the "people".