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SENATOR ROCKEFELLER’S STATEMENT ON ITC RULING ON COLD-ROLLED STEEL

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) expressed his disappointment today following the International Trade Commission’s (ITC) 4 to 1 vote against imposing duties on imported cold-rolled steel products.

"Any fair reading of the evidence before the ITC showed that there was severe injury from illegal dumping of cold-rolled steel by these countries,"Rockefeller said. "Plain and simple, the ITC got this one wrong."

Last November the ITC determined that there is a reasonable indication that the U.S. cold-rolled steel industry had been injured due to imports. In July, Rockefeller, as co-chair of the Senate Steel Caucus, testified in front of the ITC saying that the evidence brought before the panel proved that U.S. cold-rolled steel products were being injured by foreign dumping.

In response to today’s decision, Rockefeller said that, "Our anti-dumping trade laws exist to make sure that necessary measures are imposed to stop foreign producers from selling products in the U.S. below the cost required to produce it in their own country, and when U.S. producers have been injured. In this case, the ITC failed American steel workers and our domestic industry."

Illegal dumping has been one of the major causes of 35 U.S. steel companies filing for bankruptcy over the past several years. The case was brought to the ITC by Weirton Steel, Bethlehem Steel, National Steel, Nucor, Steel Dynamics, U.S. Steel and WCI Steel.

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