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Guest Commentary January 12, 2002
U.S. Steel Industry Is at Risk
The Honorable Carl Levin
I am disappointed with the conclusion of the Commerce Department's report on the effect of imports of iron ore and semi-finished steel on the national security. I disagree with the Commerce Department's conclusion that the United States' production of sufficient quantities of iron ore and semi-finished steel is not a national security issue.
I believe the Commerce Department's report underestimates how much steel is needed by our military, especially in a time of war. I look forward to seeing how the report calculated what is needed by our miliary. There is a heck of a lot of steel in military equipment, and the Department should be including steel contained in these finished products made by military contractors in addition to the raw steel procured by the military directly. We don't want to become dependent on foreign sources for our raw steel requirements.
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The report also fails to recognize the precarious financial situation of our domestic iron ore mines and the fact that this industry is at risk. The U.S. iron ore industry, along with the domestic steel industry as a whole, has been severely harmed by cheap unfairly traded steel imports.
As a result, the U.S. steel industry has suffered 29 bankruptcies and the loss of thousands of good jobs. For instance, since the report was drafted, Michigan's Empire Mine was idled indefinitely due to the bankruptcy of its major owner and one of its biggest customers, displacing almost 900 employees.
Iron ore is a major input in the production of steel. Without a domestic iron ore industry, there will be no domestically produced steel.
The Commerce Department Report is perhaps less significant in light of the International Trade Commission (ITC) finding that our domestic steel industry is being harmed by imported steel, including slab steel. The ITC recommended that a remedy such as increased tariffs be imposed to allow the domestic industry time to recover.
The President will hopefully now rise to the occasion and impose stronger remedies than those recommended by the ITC in order to save this critical and strategic industrial sector.
Carl Levin is a U.S. Senator (D-Michigan). The above column has been adapted from a speech Sen. Levin delivered on the floor of the Senate, December 20, 2001. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
