President should stand firm against extortion over tariffs

President Bush should not let the World Trade Organization and those countries the WTO has identified as victims of U.S. steel tariffs bully the United States.
Regardless of what the WTO says, it was the U.S. steel industry that was victimized by steel producers in the European Union, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Brazil. Those countries dumped their excess steel on U.S. markets , in effect exporting their unemployment to the United States.
Now a WTO appeals panel upheld the major findings of a July report that said the United States failed to prove that its industry was harmed by a sudden flood of cheap imports -- a precondition for duties of the kind President Bush imposed in 2002.
Just our imagination
No proof? Perhaps the United States imagined that 35 of its steel producing companies, including some of the largest and oldest in the nation, were forced into bankruptcy in recent years. Here in the Mahoning Valley, even now, 1,700 employees of WCI in Warren are holding their breath while the company attempts to work its way through financial reorganization.
At the urging of steel producers and steel unions, President Bush enacted a reasonable set of tariffs that were to be in effect for three years, with sliding scales and sunset provisions designed to do only one thing, give U.S. steel companies a chance to survive on something close to a level playing field.
By contrast, the European Union is now poised to impose 100 percent duties on $435 million worth of U.S. imports -- ranging from cigarettes to frozen vegetables to paper products -- unless President Bush capitulates to their demands that the steel tariffs be dropped. The targets of Europe's tariffs are not based on industrial concerns, they are purely political, chosen from a list of products in states that are politically important to the president.
The European tariffs are not retaliatory, they are extortionary.
The cave-in caucus
Those who are calling for the president to cave in are saying that the alternative is a trade war that was made in the U.S.A. If Europe retaliates against President Bush's carefully crafted steel tariffs with a bludgeon of politically motivated tariffs, it will be Europe that will be declaring war. If China and South Korea and other trading partners who have been enjoying multi-billion dollar trade balances for decades want to joint the war, they should realize that they are doing so at their own risk.
There are free-traders who demand that the United States abide by WTO rulings regardless of the fairness of those rulings because to do otherwise threatens the stability of the WTO. But President Bush must send a message that the United States will not dignify the WTO refusal to acknowledge unfair practices that threaten to destroy the U.S. steel industry.
A domestic steel industry is vital to this nation's economy and to its national defense. The United States seeks to be a trading partner to any nation, but for too long it has been a patsy to some.
There are countries in Europe, South America, Asian and the Pacific Rim that may think they want a trade war with the United States -- until they start one.