John F. Kennedy's Statement On The Steel Crisis

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President John F Kennedy, in his speech “Statement on the Steel Crisis”, published in 1962, addresses the steel crisis and argues that the rise in steel prices is detrimental, and potentially catastrophic, to the the US economy, and that nothing good can come of it. He supports this claim through his use of repeated phrases, his appeals to ethics, and finally logic. He uses these devices to accomplish his goal of persuading the American populace that they should put pressure on the steel corporations and executives to reduce their prices back to reasonable levels. One strategy kennedy uses to give credibility to his claim that the american people should put pressure on steel executives to lower the steel prices back to reasonable prices is…show more content…
In his second sentence, he states that “ We are asking reservists to leave their homes and their families for months on end and serviceman to risk their lives… and four were killed in the last two days in Vietnam. (Kennedy)”. Kennedy informs the audience of this, because he knows that the audience will not stand for steel executives greed and narcissism in the wake of this tragedy. He then goes onto tell the audience how “ If this rise in the cost of steel is imitated by the rest of the industry... it would increase the the cost of homes, autos, appliances, and most other items for every American family. (Kennedy)” By stating that all prices, and therefore, the cost in standard of living would increase because of these executives greed, the American public should not, and most likely will not stand for this. That, if the american populace were to let this travesty occur, not only would or standard of living decrease, but that it would allow for other companies to raise their prices to unreasonably high levels. He then goes on to state how it would be “More difficult for american goods to compete… More difficult to withstand foreign competition… More difficult to stem foreign payments

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