James Oberstar: “Shortly after the end of World War II a famous American historian and journalist, John Gunther, wrote: What makes…”

“Shortly after the end of World War II a famous American historian and journalist, John Gunther, wrote: What makes America a great nation is the fact that it can roll over 90 million tons of steel ingots a year, more than Great Britain, prewar Germany, Japan, France and the Soviet Union combined. Gunther wrote: ``This is a steel age.'' We still live in that steel age. Steel is still the most versatile building material in an industrial society. We are the world's most efficient producer of steel. American steel industry has lost 350,000 jobs over the last decade, has closed over 450 plants, modernized its facilities to the tune of $50 billion of investment. We have gone from 10 man hours to produce a ton of steel in 1981 to 1 rac{1}{2} to 3 hours depending on the type of steel today to produce a ton of steel compared with 4 rac{1}{2} to 5 hours in Japan, 6 rac{1}{2} hours in the European Union and 10 hours in Russia. And yet steel from those countries is being sold in the United States at below cost of production in the country of origin, and this administration, like previous administrations, until prodded by Congress, has not acted decisively to protect our domestic industry, our basic building block security industry. We need to act.…”