By Frank Swoboda Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 30, 2000; Page E01

LTV Corp., the nation's fourth-largest steel company, yesterday filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors and warned that it would be forced to shut down if it fails to quickly come up with long-term financing.

The steelmaker, in papers filed in federal bankruptcy court in Youngstown, Ohio, said the company's situation was so serious that without adequate financing "it may be necessary to immediately shut down all of its integrated steel and metal fabrication plants, lay off all of its 18,000 employees and begin to sell core assets."

LTV, which emerged from seven years of bankruptcy protection in 1993, is the ninth U.S. steel company in bankruptcy at present. The entire American steel industry is under siege from low-cost imports, a situation aggravated by the strength of the dollar against both the Japanese yen and the euro.

LTV won a short-term reprieve from Chase Manhattan Bank, which agreed to extend the company enough money to keep operations going for at least two weeks while negotiations with the bank continue. The steel company, which has not had a profit since 1997, recently reported third-quarter losses of $80 million.

LTV yesterday also questioned how long it could continue current health and pension benefits for its 70,000 retirees.

"We are aware of our responsibility to our retirees and employees under these programs, but we simply do not have the cash to support them," said LTV Chairman William Bricker in a statement. Bricker said the high fixed cost of the benefit programs put the company at "a severe competitive disadvantage in the new global steel market."

Marco Trbovich, a spokesman for the United Steelworkers union, said the union has been meeting with LTV officials "to do what we can to keep the company in business." He said the union has worked with the company to help preserve the jobs and benefits of its members in LTV's previous bankruptcy and will continue to do so.

Bricker yesterday blamed much of his company's problems on the U.S. government and its failure to enforce existing trade law to protect it from what he termed "unfairly priced" imports. He said the import competition has driven steel prices in the United States to 20-year lows.

"We ask only that our government do its job by enforcing the law and we'll do ours by making the changes needed to succeed in the new steel market," Bricker said in a statement. "LTV and its employees across the nation have been betrayed by the government's reluctance to take action against the 'dumping' of unfairly priced steel in the U.S. market by foreign competitors. How many more U.S. steel companies must be driven into bankruptcy before the government acts?"

The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled on Thursday that there was a "reasonable indication" that the U.S. steel industry has suffered material injury from subsidized or underpriced steel from 11 countries. The commission must now decide whether to impose additional duties on imports from those countries.

But yesterday, the U.S. Export-Import Bank confirmed that last week it had approved an $18 million loan guarantee to allow General Electric Corp. and other U.S. manufacturers to sell equipment to Benxi Iron and Steel Co. in China to help it increase production. China is one of the 11 countries cited this week by the trade commission.

Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta had asked the bank to reject the China deal on the grounds that it would harm U.S. steelmakers.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

-- Meg Davis (meg9999@aol.com), January 02, 2001