Use your browser's back button to return to Senator Rockefeller's Webpage.

Washington, DC – Taking his case directly to the Vice President, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) last night personally urged Dick Cheney to immediately convene an emergency national summit on steel. This follows-up on a letter the Senator had sent to President Bush last month asking for immediate steel action by the Administration. And today, the Senator delivered a hand-written letter to the Vice President at the White House repeating his plea for action as quickly as possible.

"I told the Vice President that the situation in the steel industry is desperate – much worse than anyone realizes. Unfortunately, the failure of the former Clinton Administration to take decisive action on steel has only deepened the crisis.

"This is a real national crisis that can only be resolved by emergency action by the Administration. Nothing less can stave off irreparable damage in the steel industry. This is a real national emergency and we simply can’t wait to act.

"I let him know that I just spent 2 days in Weirton and Wheeling, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, where the steel crisis is real and immediate every day," Rockefeller said. "The impact of steel is felt across my state, not only by steel communities, but also throughout southern West Virginia which supplies coal to fuel the steel industry."

"On January 29, I wrote President Bush and asked him to urgently convene a national summit on steel, to include the leaders of other important related industries, and to initiate a Section 201 trade action.

"We cannot wait, the time to act is now, and that is why I seized an opportunity to talk to Vice President Cheney. The Vice President came to Weirton last fall. He knows that the steel industry is suffering and he said then that steel is critical to our national security," Rockefeller said.

In addition to urging a national summit on steel, Rockefeller also pressed for a Section 201 investigation to provide comprehensive relief to all domestic steel producers.

Rockefeller made the case to Cheney that this is not just about West Virginia. It is about every steel producing state in the country and about the United States’ ability to maintain basic steelmaking capacity.

Rockefeller added, "Our steelworkers have committed themselves to doing whatever it takes to preserve America’s steel industry. They need their government’s help to fight against unprecedented import levels combined with unfair trading practices. We owe it to these men and women and the residents of steel communities throughout the nation to take action now."

A copy of the Senator’s letter to the President follows:

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500

January 29, 2001

Mr. President,

The United States’ steel industry is facing the most devastating crisis in its 200-year history. Almost half our nation’s largest steelmakers, fourteen to date, are in bankruptcy, and other major producers are in imminent danger. If your Administration does not move quickly and decisively we will lose basic steelmaking capacity in the United States. That, in my view, would be a clear and present threat to our national security interests. And it will surely be devastating to the steel communities in my state of West Virginia, and those in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, and other steel producing states.

The current steel crisis requires your strong leadership. I emphatically call on you to direct the following comprehensive steps be undertaken by your Administration:

(1) an immediate call for a 201 review by the International Trade Commission;

(2) convene an Emergency National Summit on Steel; and,

(3) initiate an emergency round of multilateral steel negotiations with both our WTO and non-WTO trading partners to negotiate and achieve meaningful temporary restraints on steel imports.

Please allow me to explain why this emergency action is needed.

The flood of illegally dumped imports have only minimally abated since the Asian financial crisis more than three years ago. The slight drop off of imports is largely due to rock bottom prices, world-wide, which make it difficult for even our subsidized trading partners to profit from dumping on our market. In fact, most industry experts expect another significant import surge to occur in this quarter or next.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has fully documented the problems of global steel trade in a recent report, which I recommend to you (The Problems of Global Steel Trade). It found that the massive subsidization in other countries and the global overcapacity in the steel industry means that we must move on many fronts to find effective solutions. We must use every possible legal means to maintain our own domestic industry as the long term problems of global steel trade are worked through on a multilateral level.

Steel is the bedrock of our manufacturing economy and essential to our national defense. We need to maintain a strong domestic steel industry. Both your Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Commerce recognized this fundamental point during the confirmation process. And both you and the Vice President told the people of West Virginia last Fall that your new Administration would defend our nation’s steel industry and aggressively enforce our unfair trade laws. The time for comprehensive action is now; if you delay, we simply may not have a steel industry to save.

As a Senator from West Virginia, I can report that the steelworkers in Wheeling, WV, their families and the businesses that depend on Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel are suffering from the same economic uncertainty affecting steel communities in southern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and northern Indiana. Frankly, I am extremely concerned that in West Virginia, neither Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel, our nation’s ninth largest integrated steel producer, nor Weirton Steel, our nation’s eighth largest integrated producer, can survive another long, laborious process of piecemeal trade cases and insufficient remedies.

Mr. President, under our trade laws, you have the authority to provide comprehensive relief to the U.S. steel industry by initiating action under Section 201 of the 1974 Trade Act. I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, not to wait another day to direct a 201 investigation by the International Trade Commission. Only your initiation of this review will give people confidence that a meaningful remedy will be directed. If the ITC finds, as I believe it must, that imports are a substantial cause of serious injury to our steel industry, you have ability and duty to order relief. Only comprehensive relief applied to all categories of steel, exported by all countries, will give our industry the chance to rebuild from the financial devastation of the last several years.

At the beginning of the last steel crisis and for the subsequent three years I pressed the previous Administration to request a 201 review. It did not do so, choosing to rely on the outcome of individual trade cases and a few administrative actions — this approach has proven itself entirely inadequate. Despite a number of important trade case wins, our trading partners have figured out how to switch their dumping from one category of steel product to another, and from one country to another, to avoid the penalties rightly imposed on unfair trade

At the very close of his Administration, President Clinton did finally write the ITC and ask it to consider conducting a 201 investigation. I deeply wish that his action had come sooner because the crisis has deepened.

If you act under 201 you can be confident you will have the support of a united steel industry. Union leaders and the CEOs of 76 companies joined in asking President Clinton to acknowledge that another round of imports has the potential to destroy the U.S. steel industry completely, and thus requested a comprehensive case under Section 201. I joined them in that request, and I know they will join in the plea to you at this time.

For our nation’s economic and national security interest, we need a strong U.S. steel industry. Your initiation of a Section 201 action is critical -- this is not something that can wait. We can debate the best long term solution once we save the steel industry from its immediate peril. I look forward to working with you to promote America’s interests and to preserve our steel industry.

Sincerely,

John D. Rockefeller IV

###