I am the President of the United Steelworkers, and am proud to represent workers across a broad range of manufacturing (and other) industries, including producers of OCTG.  This is the most important steel case against China that the USW has been involved in.  Between the end of 2008 and September 2009, this industry lost 2,421 workers.  Hours worked in the industry fell by more than half and wages earned fell by over $108 million.  All overtime was eliminated and many workers saw their weeks cut from 40 to 32 or even 24 hours.  Productivity plummeted, not because our workers were not working hard but because production declined so dramatically that production was not at utilization rates that were economical. Some employers, who understand the value of good employees, also kept employees on the payroll for extra maintenance work and not for actual production or finishing of OCTG.

These numbers are important, as they demonstrate the injury resulting from 3 million tons of dumped and subsidized OCTG from China that landed on our shores in 2008 and 2009.  But for workers in this industry, these aren’t simply numbers.  For workers in Lone Star, Bellville and Conroe, Texas; Fairfield, Alabama; Lorain, Youngstown and Warren, Ohio; Wheatland, Koppel and Ambridge, Pennsylvania; Wilder, Kentucky; Camanche, Iowa; Blytheville and Hickman, Arkansas; and Pueblo, Colorado, these aren’t numbers; these are shattered lives.  These are families that can’t pay for necessities like healthcare, and who, after nine months of unemployment, have missed mortgage payments and have had their homes foreclosed; these are hard-working American men and women who have had their lives completely torn apart by such massive imports of unfairly traded OCTG.  We have here today several USW members from plants in Koppel and Wheatland, PA and Warren, OH.  I want to recognize them and would ask them to stand up to put faces on the numbers.  Many of these workers have been on layoff for months.  Others are working reduced shifts and are scared to death that if this Commission makes a negative decision, they and their colleagues will lose their jobs next.  In addition to the workers in the OCTG industry, the USW also has experienced additional thousands of workers laid off at flat rolled steel mills – mills that could not produce steel for welded OCTG producers because Chinese imports have completely overrun the market.

The Chinese say they came here because the market needed their product.  But that is patently absurd, as the evidence before you reveals.  They have targeted the OCTG market just as they have targeted the steel market.  The Chinese enjoy a $250 billion trade surplus with the United States built upon the foundation of beggar they neighbor trade policies, like the massive government subsidization found to exist in the OCTG industry and the manipulation of their currency, which provides an unfair competitive advantage to their exports. 

We come before you today seeking much-needed trade relief to permit the massive inventories of unfairly traded imports from China to be worked off so our workers can go back to work and regain their livelihoods and dignity.  Not to take action here would permanently cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, of jobs in the OCTG industry and the related steel industry, as well as permanent harm to all of the communities that depend on that manufacturing and that would be devastated by permanently shuttered mills.  Please see the workers sitting here today.  I ask you to think of them as what they are – hardworking Americans – not just statistics on a page.  For all our sakes’, I ask you to enforce the law.  Thank you.