Bush administration should stand firm on steel tariffs

The U.S. steel industry won its first real victory in a decade this year when the U.S. International Trade Commission finally ruled that subsidized imports have hurt American steel companies. That opened the way to slap the offending countries with tariffs.
As we've said before, the trade commission's action came too late for dozens of steel companies and thousands of steel workers, but at least it was a start.
Perhaps we spoke too soon, because already there are powerful interests trying to persuade the Bush administration that it doesn't need to invoke tariffs, at least not against European steel producers, who have seen the error of their ways.
In a recent editorial, The Washington Post made its free-trade pitch to the White House.
Characterizing the president's willingness to impose tariffs as a concession to protectionists, the Post argued that it's more important to protect middlemen who buy steel on the open markets than to protect the domestic steel industry. Besides, since the European Union has agreed to reduce production by 10 percent, the administration should drop pursuit of punitive tariffs.
So the Post is telling us that if the European steel dumpers aren't rewarded for their magnanimous gesture, they won't be inclined to negotiate.
What poppycock. Imagine you were a homeowner who just caught a thief red-handed. The thief's fence -- a businessman who's been saving money by stocking his shelves with merchandise from a thief rather than a legitimate wholesaler -- urges you to negotiate rather than punish the thief. The sole concession by the thief is that he agrees not to steal from you in the foreseeable future. that's it. You don't even get back what was stolen.
Questions: Would you be a fool to agree? Yes. Would the Bush administration be foolish to listen to steel buyers and such handmaidens as The Washington Post? Yes again.
The American steel industry and the government have been played for patsies by countries in Europe, Africa and Asia that have been more than willing to export their unemployment to the United States by selling their products at below cost. That's not free trade; it's not fair trade. It's cheating.
Perhaps the most disturbing argument made by the Post was in this sentence: "[T]he American steel industry employs only 200,000 people, far fewer than the steel-consuming industries that would pay the price for protectionist tariffs."
The reason the American steel industry employs only 200,000 people today -- about four times the number of steel workers who used to work in the Mahoning Valley alone -- is that the government didn't protect the industry. To suggest that what's left of the industry should be sacrificed on the same altar is both soft-headed and calloused. And a lot easier to say in Washington than in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia or those other states from which steel jobs are being taken.