Remarks at Award for Corporate Excellence

(As prepared)

Secretary Powell, President Usher -- dear Tom, ladies and gentlemen: I am glad that I can join you today in celebrating the success of U.S. Steel. If Andy Warhol were with us today, he would be proud of us. When he was, as a child, browsing with his brother Paul through the scrap metal of the steel mills in Pittsburgh, he would not have imagined that Slovakia, where his parents came from, would once become a second home to these very steel mills. Even later, he would not have imagined that Slovakia would not only be free from the communist oppression but that these very steel mills would come to symbolize the ties between Slovakia and the United States.

I am proud that the Slovaks contributed so much to the fabric of life in the United States, in Pennsylvania and especially in Pittsburgh. And I am proud that a century later, the steel mills that they helped to build in the United States came to make their stronghold in the Slovak economy. And they did. As America was a beacon of democracy for us when we were not free, U.S. Steel became a beacon of new business ethics at the critical time of transformation of our economy.