Bart Stupak: “I take to the floor tonight to talk about President Bush's proposed remedies on steel imports. Unfortunately, for those…”

“I take to the floor tonight to talk about President Bush's proposed remedies on steel imports. Unfortunately, for those of us who represent iron ore miners in northern Minnesota and northern Michigan, the remedy proposed by the President today does little to help us. We must look back to December of last year in which the ITC, the International Trade Commission, by a six to nothing vote said illegal steel, steel products, slab steel, was being dumped in this country to the great harm of the U.S. steel industry. With slab steel, that replaces iron ore pellets. In order to make steel, we need a raw product like iron ore pellets or slab steel. In order to corner the market, foreign countries have been dumping slab steel in this country at exorbitant amounts since 1998. Every time slab steel comes into our country, it hurts our iron ore miners. In fact, up in my district, the Empire Mine has just shut down. Over 800 workers have been laid off and all the managerial and administrative people have been laid off. So we were hoping today that President Bush would give us a strong steel remedy. We asked for 40 percent over 4 years, as allowable under U.S. law. Although the report was put forth today, and some in the media have called the tariff and quota on imported steel a compromise, I believe the iron ore industry may have been sacrificed in making that compromise. We in the iron ore industry have basically been sold out.”