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. 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. 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.