[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13720-13721]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        STEEL IMPORT LIMITATION

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I think I will come back to the floor, 
and depending on how many Senators are out here, I will speak more on 
this. But in this short period of time I want to try to deal with some 
of the arguments on this very important cloture vote on H.R. 975. There 
are three arguments I want to address in 4 or 5 minutes.
  The first argument is that the steel crisis is over. That is what I 
hear from the White House. I say to my colleagues, I spent the weekend 
on the Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota, both in Duluth and on the 
Iron Range in Minnesota. If you were to speak to some of the 108 
workers who have been laid off at EVTAC Mining, or talked to the 
workers at Minntac who had to make all sorts of concessions last fall 
to avoid layoffs, or if you were to talk to workers at LTV in Hoyt 
Lakes, you would find quite another reality. I think it would be hard 
for the administration or any Senator, Republican or Democrat, to go to 
the Iron Range in Minnesota, where we produce the iron ore for our 
steel, and tell these workers or their families that this crisis is 
over. This crisis is far from over.
  To go to the flip side of the coin, but it is the same coin, I ask 
unanimous consent a letter dated June 18 from the CEOs of the major 
steel companies to Secretary Daley be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

     Hon. William M. Daley,
     Secretary of Commerce, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Secretary: We regret that your schedule required 
     the cancellation of our meeting with you today. There are 
     issues that are vital to our industry and to the Department's 
     mission in trade law enforcement that require us to meet 
     together as soon as you can do so.
       We feel compelled, however, since we could not meet with 
     you today, to convey to you immediately our emphatic 
     disagreement with the comment attributed to you in this 
     morning's Washington Post that ``the steel crisis is over''.
       The steel crisis is still very much with us. Imports 
     volumes are down from the disastrous levels of 1998 but are 
     still very high by historic standards. While imports of hot-
     rolled steel are down dramatically due to your enforcement 
     actions, the surge of imports in 1998 caused inventories to 
     balloon to extremely high levels. These inventories have 
     seriously depressed prices up until the present and will 
     continue to do so until these stocks have been worked down. 
     Moreover, cold-rolled imports are up dramatically through 
     April of this year, 24% above the level of the first four 
     months of last year. Imports of cut-to-length plate are up 
     dramatically--25% year-to-year for this period. (If full year 
     1999 imports decline, it will only be because of the 
     Department's prosecution of the cases against unfair trade 
     that our companies recently filed.)
       Prices remain extremely depressed. The producer price index 
     for all steel mill products is down 9% (1999:Q2/1998/Q2). 
     This is the largest decline in nearly 20 years. Prices for 
     hot-rolled sheet, cold-rolled sheet and plate are down 11%, 
     9%, and 15%, respectively.
       Operating rates have plunged from 93% to 80% between 
     January and December 1998 and have remained at the depressed 
     level through the first half of 1999. The decline in 
     operating rates equates to about $2 billion in lost revenue 
     in the second half of last year. On an annualized basis, a 
     10% change in operating rate equals about $5 billion in 
     revenue. (Please see the attached charts addressing the facts 
     set out above.)
       The depressed prices and operating rates caused most 
     American steel companies to post losses in the most recent 
     quarter. Several steel companies have seen forced into 
     bankruptcy. Thousands of those who were laid off due to 
     unfairly traded imports are still out of work. Many thousands 
     have seen their workweeks shortened and are still not back to 
     full time.
       For our industry, therefore, this crisis is far from over. 
     It is very real, and very much with us.
       We look forward to meeting with you soon. Your role in 
     overseeing the Department's vigorous enforcement of the trade 
     laws last fall was vital in preventing what is a continuing 
     crisis from turning into an irreversible disaster. Your 
     prompt action taken in initiating and prosecuting cases 
     against dumping of hot-rolled steel from Japan, Russia and 
     Brazil was essential to curtail the surge in these unfairly 
     traded imports. The personal attention and energy which you 
     have devoted to enforcing U.S. trade laws at the height of 
     the import surge is deeply appreciated by all of us.
       The Department is proceeding now to investigate other steel 
     cases in cut-to-length plate and is due to make public its 
     initiation decisions on the cold-rolled steel cases on 
     Tuesday. These actions and decisions are

[[Page 13721]]

     vital to the future of the American steel industry.
           Very truly yours,
         Hank Barnette, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, 
           Bethlehem Steel Corporation; James DeClusin, Senior 
           Executive Vice President, California Steel Industries; 
           Don Daily, Vice President & General Manager, Gallatin 
           Steel; Joseph Cannon, Chief Executive Officer & 
           Chairman, Geneva Steel; Robert Schaal, Chairman and 
           Chief Executive Officer, Gulf States Steel, Inc.; Roger 
           Phillips, President and Chief Executive Officer, IPSCO 
           Inc.; Dale E. Wiersbe, President and Chief Operating 
           Officer, Ispat Inland Inc.; J. Peter Kelly, President & 
           Chief Executive Officer, LTV Steel Company, Inc.; John 
           Maczuzak, President & Chief Operating Officer, National 
           Steel Corporation; Keith Busse, President & Chief 
           Executive Officer, Steel Dynamics, Inc.; Paul Wilhelm, 
           President, U.S. Steel Group, a Unit of USX Corporation; 
           Richard Reiderer, President and Chief Executive 
           Officer, Weirton Steel Corporation.

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, they make it clear the crisis is far 
from over as well.
  The global conditions at the root of the crisis have not gone away. 
Imports from the major foreign producers have declined, but other 
countries have taken their place and we see major producers shifting to 
different steel products to get around the dumping orders. We need this 
Rockefeller bill to plug the loopholes.
  Dumping cases take time. In many cases the relief is too little too 
late, or it gets negotiated away in suspension agreements. I am afraid 
someday we are going to wake up and we are not going to have any steel 
industry at all.
  In my State of Minnesota we were a part of what happened in the 
1980s, when we lost 350,000 steelworker jobs and 28,000 people left the 
Iron Range for good. As a Senator, I do not want to let that happen 
again.
  The second argument that is made by the administration is that we 
cannot go forward with this bill because this is quota relief, and the 
question is whether or not quota relief is WTO-legal.
  I see here a bit of a double standard. When Mr. Carl Lindner from 
Chiquita Bananas had a trade complaint, the administration did not 
hesitate to slap a 100-percent tariff on imports from Europe. But when 
our workers and working families ask for some relief under Section 201, 
which provides for quotas and is WTO-legal, then all of a sudden there 
is no relief forthcoming.
  Finally, I make a point that this crisis is not the fault of 
steelworkers. They should not be the ones asked to pay the price. I am 
in complete agreement that we ought to care fiercely about what happens 
in Russia, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, and other countries as 
well, but again I see another double standard. When our financial 
interests, when a lot of our Wall Street interests, if you will, wanted 
to be able to invest capital in these countries and take capital out at 
a second's notice, when they wanted to put hot capital in and take hot 
capital out without any regulatory framework in place, they were 
pleased to do so as long as they were making huge profits. Then when 
they decided to pull their capital out, these countries were left in 
terrible trouble. When it came to whether or not there would be IMF 
bailouts and whether or not there would be any kind of public dollars 
to help these financial interests out, again we had an administration 
that was all for these Wall Street interests.
  I come to the floor of the Senate today to say this administration 
ought to really put working families--steelworkers of the Iron Range, 
steelworkers all across the country--as high on its list of priorities 
as Wall Street investors. And not just those steelworkers but the 
communities where they work and the communities where they live.
  This bill, H.R. 975, is a good place to start. I thank Senator 
Rockefeller for his leadership. I am proud to be out here on the floor 
speaking on this legislation. I hope we not only get votes for cloture, 
but we get more than enough votes to override any Presidential veto. 
This is a critically important vote that is going to take place within 
the next hour.
  I yield the floor.

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