NEW YORK — President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that the U.S. steel industry was “dead” before he took office and that his predecessor Barack Obama had “shut it down.”

It wasn’t, and Obama didn’t.

The remarks came during an unusual question-and-answer session with Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, at the White House.

“One of the things I’m very proud of is the steel industry,” Trump said. “The steel industry was dead. It was as dead as a doornail. We weren’t going to have a steel industry in two years.”

In fact, U.S. steelmakers Nucor Corp. and Steel Dynamics Inc. were two of the healthiest commodity companies in the world before Trump took office and imposed 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel imports. Trump appeared to conflate steel with another industry, aluminum, which was suffering before the president imposed a 10 percent tariff on imports of that metal.

“It used to be our great industry,” Trump said. “United States Steel was our biggest company many years ago and there was nothing even like it. It was a juggernaut.”

U.S. Steel Corp. was an unhealthy company as recently as 2015, when many analysts questioned its viability. It still carries a lot of debt on its balance sheet, runs old plants and is further hurt by labor contracts that many of its competitors don’t have to deal with. Lately, things are improving as the steelmaker generates more cash as rising prices and tariffs keep overseas competitors at bay.

The Obama administration didn’t impose significant new regulations on steel manufacturers.