[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 129 (Wednesday, July 26, 2023)]
[House]
[Page H3963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   BRING STEEL PLANTS BACK TO AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Khanna) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Speaker, recently I traveled to Lordstown, Ohio, in 
Ashtabula County, Ohio; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and Farrell, 
Pennsylvania. I saw steel mill after steel mill shut down, including in 
Cleveland, in Detroit, and in Downriver, Michigan.
  Of the world's top 15 steel companies, China has 9 and the United 
States of America doesn't have a single one. How did we let this happen 
as a country? How did we decimate American steel, costing community 
after community so many good jobs, hurting urban centers with large 
African-American working populations, and hurting factory towns across 
America? This was a colossal mistake.
  In the 1950s, we used to make over 50 percent of the world's steel. 
That is down to 2 or 3 percent. Today, China makes nearly 50 percent of 
the world's steel.
  This is a national security issue if we ever have to mobilize for our 
military. This is a climate issue. China's steel puts three times the 
emissions into the atmosphere than American steel does because we use 
electric arc furnaces and recycled material, unlike the blast furnaces 
that China uses.
  It is time for America to have a strategy to bring modern steel 
production back home. We can make steel that is cleaner and of higher 
quality; and we can revitalize towns like Johnstown, Pennsylvania; 
Lordstown, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; and Downriver, Michigan, if we build 
these modern steel plants.
  I am going to be working with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to 
introduce a modern steel act to say that the government should partner 
with our steel unions and with our steel companies to build modern 
steel in the United States of America.
  This will be clean steel with either hydrogen or electric arc 
furnaces. This will create good-paying jobs. This will be good for 
national security, and this will ensure that America leads in steel in 
the 21st century, not China.
  Mr. Speaker, we made a big, big error in the United States of 
America, losing our lead in domestic production. It is time for our 
country to become a manufacturing superpower again. It is time to begin 
that with modern steel.

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