Why would foreign powers sell Italy naval steel?

Would Britain, France, or Czechoslovakia sell steel to Italy if they feared how the Regia Marina would use it?

Probably, because supplying a potential rival also exposed what Italy was building and preserved valuable industrial intelligence.

Foreign suppliers had reasons to keep selling strategic material even when Italy's naval ambitions caused concern. Orders revealed the scale and direction of Italian construction instead of leaving it hidden behind a fully domestic industrial base. The same logic applied to turbines, boilers, and licensed machinery whose performance characteristics were known to the supplier. Commercial dependence therefore constrained secrecy as well as wartime self-sufficiency.