Angie Craig: “I rise today to visit with my colleagues about something that is going on in Idaho and across this Nation at this moment…”

“I rise today to visit with my colleagues about something that is going on in Idaho and across this Nation at this moment that is critical to our economy, and especially critical to the economy of the State of Idaho. The situation that a company in Idaho finds itself in at this moment has resulted in its need to lay off 10 percent of its workforce because of actions taken by the Korean Government to prop up a bankrupt competitor of Micron. Micron is a company in Idaho that has been in place and is the world's second largest producer of memory chips. As a result of the Korean Government's propping up of the Hynix Semiconductor Corporation, the market now is tremendously softened and layoffs are occurring. In the mid-1980s, Micron almost went out of business because of dumping by Japanese companies. At that time, I acted in concert with the Bush Government. President Bush at that time worked with the Department of Commerce to put duties on that offset, but eventually that overrode that impact and it allowed that company, Micron, to become the second larger of the semiconductor companies in the world today. Micron, as I mentioned, is critical to the technological base of the United States. It employs 13,000 people--invaluable high-tech jobs in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.”