Nolan Lauds Return to Work at Minntac

Statement

U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan said today that U.S. Steel's decision to call some 400 laid off Minntac employees back to work is "great and welcome news for workers and their families and for all the businesses most directly affected by these layoffs."

"The restoration of these good mining jobs will be a real boost to our Range economy as families gear up to send kids back to school, plan end of summer vacations and begin planning for the Holiday Season," Nolan continued.

In March, Nolan met with top officials at the White House, where the Administration firmly committed to working with the Minnesota Congressional delegation and with the Governor to provide Trade Adjustment Assistance and every possible help to the miners and mining families across the region.

The Eighth District Congressman pledged to redouble his efforts build Congressional support to address the core reasons for ongoing mining and steel industry layoffs -- illegal dumping of low-grade government subsidized foreign steel into the U.S. market and un-enforceable trade agreements that allow severe economic damage to occur before remedial actions can be taken.

And Nolan again cited the need for Congress to defeat the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that promises to open U.S. markets to more foreign steel dumping, along with cheap foreign knock-offs of U.S. manufactured goods. "The TPP is one more in a long list of trade agreement debacles that only promises to do more damage and send more good middle class jobs overseas to benefit multi-national corporations and their executives," Nolan continued.

"As I said when these layoffs were first announced in March, the heart of the matter is that the process of enforcing our trade policies and agreements against the illegal dumping of foreign steel into our marketplace is broken. It's ineffective. It takes too long. It's full of loopholes that allow horrific damage to be done before any action can be taken. What's more, there are no effective tariffs on foreign steel. As a result, our jobs, our economy and our national security are being put at enormous risk."

"Of course we need to speed verification of illegal dumping -- but the fact remains that once we approve a trade agreement, we're stuck with the broken enforcement process that goes along with it. Until we fix the enforcement process once and for all, we should halt consideration of any more trade agreements like NAFTA - a debacle that has already cost us a million good jobs and contributed to the closure of some 57,000 manufacturing facilities."

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