Approval of an agreement to control shipments of European steel to America should give a long-needed shot in the arm to the ailing domestic steel industry. While the pact’s benefits will have their limits and certainly will be no cure-all, the new arrangement is expected to translate into jobs, improvement in industry stability, and hence a positive effect on the economy. Domestic steel companies long have complained of the undermining effect of intense foreign competition, particularly from producers with unfair advantage because of one form of subsidy or another. Only recently, U. S. Steel Corp. Chairman David M. Roderick, who also serves as chairman of the American Iron and Steel Institute, said the combination of foreign shipments and high labor costs could be the doom of the American steel industry. His remarks cannot be taken lightly with steel mills limping along at about half-capacity output and 140,000 steelworkers currently on layoff. The U.S.-European agreement brings apparent solution to a longstanding dispute with limitations set on shipment of various steel products. As part of the pact, eight American steel companies agreed to withdraw unfair trade complaints filed against European firms, alleging below-cost sales and unfair subsidies. The next goal in the drive for domestic steel recovery could be more favorable labor contracts. “If we had the labor costs of a Japan, we wouldn’t have an important problem,” Roderick told steel industry analysts meeting in Cleveland. “If wages continue to escalate, the industry could permanently lose the jobs of workers now laid off.” It would be unreasonable to equate American wages with those of some other countries, but Roderick made a telling point when he charged that the average steelworker’s hourly wage-which he pegged at $24–is nearly double that of other manufacturing industries. “We cannot survive by attempting to carry such a premium on cost which has grown topheavy measured against the wages of Americans in any other manufacturing industry, or against wage competition from the same union’s own locals in Canada, domestic minimills, Europe, Japan, and the Third World,” he asserted. The industry is expected to pursue wage concessions when the current contract with the United Steelworkers of America expires in August 1983. But taking one step at a time, the immediate focus should be to implement and enforce the new agreement with the European countries and deal with other allegedly-unfair import practices. The steel industry is important to the country, Improvement of its own economic health can have an impact on the state of America’s economy.