American Steel Industry Remarks Announcing the Revitalization Program.

This is an important event in my own life as President, I think, in the life of our country, not only what it means to our Nation but also a demonstration of how government and industry, labor, public citizens groups, environmentalists can work together to deal with a very complicated and very challenging problem. A healthy and modern steel industry is vital to our Nation's economy and also to our Nation's security. Working together we now have a good opportunity to revitalize this basic industry.

Economically our Nation is living in a constantly changing world, a new world. We must meet foreign competition. We must reverse our declining productivity-still, by the way, the highest in the world. We must protect our environment. And we must create jobs for a constantly growing work force. These are serious challenges, and all of them are closely interrelated. They require thoughtful, longrange analysis and attacks on many fronts at the same time. In today's real world a quick fix of one particular problem easily means quick trouble with another or others.

A few weeks ago I presented to the Nation a thorough plan for rebuilding the industrial base of America. Its carefully targeted public and private investment programs would put people back to work, attacking the two long-range problems of declining productivity and energy dependence that brought us both higher inflation and unemployment in the first place. We will modernize our industrial capacity, advance our technology, create new jobs and skills, rebuild our transportation system, reduce our energy dependence, and regain our competitive edge all at the same time. The entire program which I outlined is noninflationary in nature, a very important aspect at this time in our economic growth.

These goals can only be met by creating a new spirit of determined cooperation, and this meeting today is a milestone along that path of progress. The comprehensive steel agreement that we've reached is proof that the proper role of government is to be a partner in economic change, not an impediment and also not an uninterested or indifferent spectator.

The American steel industry is our third largest, exceeded only by petroleum and automobiles. Not only is the revitalization of these basic industries important to our economic health, it's necessary to preserve our national security, our ability to defend ourselves in case of a crisis. No nation can be a world power, with the ability to defend itself and to deter aggression, no nation can adequately defend itself without a strong industrial base to provide the necessary implements of national defense. Obviously, steel is perhaps the most crucial of all these industries.

Resolving conflicts among business, labor, and government in the steel industry has not been a simple matter of getting off each other's backs. It's required us to work together and to hammer out ways to keep America producing and working. The Steel Tripartite Advisory Committee has worked hundreds of hours over the last 2 years, reviewing every possible approach to our industry's future. This industry, we all recognized from the very beginning, is vital, and it also has inherent strengths that has constantly give us hope.

The hard work of the members of this Committee has shown that this industry can indeed modernize, that it can do so in a way that protects our environment, and that it has the will to regain its competitiveness and also its health. The Committee has now given me their conclusions on how the Federal Government can help the steel industry in its own efforts. They've recommended to me policies that will help workers, their families, and steelmaking communities overcome the challenges of a restructured steel industry, assist in capital formation, and increase investment, to discover and develop new technologies, to maintain free and fair trade, to guarantee that the industry can and will meet our environmental requirements.

I'm pleased to be able to accept the thrust of these recommendations, and I propose ways to achieve them in a detailed statement which we are releasing today, which will be described in just a few minutes. Secretary Klutznick, the Secretary of Commerce, Secretary Marshall, the Secretary of Labor, Doug Costle, Ambassador Askew, our Special Trade Representative, and Stu Eizenstat from my staff will now present the elements of that program.

On behalf of the workers and managers and the communities who give life to one of America's vital industries and who derive life from it, I want to thank the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor and all the members of this Committee for their efforts. They've proven that the proper role of government in our economy is in helping our industry and our workers to help America, and that's the path of the better future, which I am determined that our Nation will follow. And with your help, I have no doubt that we will be successful.

Again, my thanks to all of you, particularly those men and women who have served so well in evolving this plan. I believe that you will be pleased with it. I'm determined to carry it out, and I'm also equally determined that it will be successful.

Thank you very much.