Don't be pigheaded about steel imports

Seattle Times: The World Trade Organization once again has ruled that the United States has violated the WTO agreement by protecting a domestic industry, in this case, steel.
The ruling is no surprise, and is deserved. Neither when Congress wrote the trade law nor when the executive branch applied it was there any effort to comply with foreign obligations or a broad, American interest.
What counted was politics. President Bush, who had carried the steel states of West Virginia and Ohio in his election, wants to carry them again, and to have a better shot at Pennsylvania. The new taxes of 8 percent to 30 percent were a gift to the steel states.
Price increase
The effect of taxing imported but not domestic steel was a sharp price increase in the local product. That was not in the broad national interest. America has far more businesses that use steel than make it. Many steel users are themselves exporters, or compete with foreign producers here. To compete, American companies need to be free to buy raw and semi-finished materials at the world price.
Even the steel producers need to be able to buy foreign slab from time to time, which they do. Ironically, U.S. trade law allowed them to cite their own purchases as evidence of harm from foreign competition.
This issue also has a regional interest. Steel is imported by ship. That means that the benefit of imported steel is greatest to those cities, such as Seattle and Tacoma. Industry here is going to be using lots of imported steel anyway, because transportation by ship is cheaper than rail. For us, the question is whether we shall have steel at a world price or with an extra tax designed to butter the bread of producers in Ohio and West Virginia.
Don't fight it
The WTO ruling is said to be "against" the United States. So it was, technically; but in supporting free trade it was in a larger sense for the United States. The administration should follow the ruling rather than fight it.