While last year was a boom year for many U.S. industries, the U.S. steel industry found itself in the fight of its life, battling a flood of foreign imports for its very survival.

Since 1998, 19 U.S. steel producers have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Bethlehem Steel Corp., which owns the Sparrows Point facility, reported a net loss of some $118 million in the first quarter of 2001. In July, it reported a $96 million loss in operations for the second quarter of this year.

The crisis threatening the U.S. steel industry can be traced to excess foreign steel production and the 1998 Asian and Russian financial crises. At that time, Asian markets dried up and foreign producers -- particularly Japan, Russia, Brazil and Korea -- began to unload their high inventory of steel in the United States. Since then, these dumped imports, which are highly subsidized by foreign governments, have penetrated the U.S. market by a historic 30%.

Massive overproduction of foreign steel -- estimated at some 275 million metric tons -- threatens the very existence of the U.S. steel industry. It's enough excess capacity to supply more than twice our domestic demand for steel.

Bethlehem Steel has done all the right things to remain competitive -- spending some $900 million in the last five years to modernize production at Sparrows Point. But the U.S. steel industry cannot compete with steelmakers who receive government subsidies that enable them to dump steel products in this country at prices that are below their costs of production.

The health of Bethlehem Steel is very important to Baltimore's economy. The Sparrows Point facility employs some 3,800 workers, and pumps more than $1 billion into our local economy each year.

In June, the Bush Administration took the right step in directing the International Trade Commission (ITC) to initiate a Section-201 investigation into the massive influx of foreign steel that has flooded the U.S. market since 1998.

The ITC investigation is one step, but Congress also must be more aggressive in helping U.S. steel manufacturers weather the storm of global overproduction and dumped imports. I recently introduced, along with a bipartisan group of members, The Trade Law Reform Act to help U.S. industries deal with injurious levels of imports.

In March, I joined a bipartisan group of members in introducing The Steel Revitalization Act, which would address the glut of illegally dumped imports by setting import levels at the average level of penetration that occurred three years prior to the onset of the 1998 steel crisis.

From railroads to skyscrapers to thousands of different products, steel built this nation. It is now under siege from illegally traded imports that are being dumped on our markets. How we deal with this threat will set the tone for all future trading relationships in the 21st Century. If we fail to act, we can watch the U.S. steel industry falter and other U.S. industries come under the same kind of attack.