compete with domestic minimills, so we get to alienate
our allies in the middle of a war. For what, the union vote?
Ronald Reagan was a conservative. Dubya is Doughboy.
Posted on 03/09/2002 3:49:01 PM PST by Pokey78
ABOUT a month ago in these pages, I had cause to complain about the headline appended to my review of George W Bush's first year: "My, How You've Grown".
I pointed out that, as I've always regarded the President as a colossus who bestrides the planet, he could hardly grow any more in my eyes. Well, if the Executive Editor (Headlines) is short of inspiration this weekend, feel free to use my suggestion: My, How You've Shrunk.
Last Tuesday was the absolute low point of the Bush presidency. Even in the wobblier moments of September 11 and 12, he never said or did anything flat-out, stinking-to-high-heaven wrong. But last week he slapped tariffs of 30 per cent on imported steel.
Canada and Mexico are exempt, because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and so are selected developing countries, beneficiaries of the new Bush Doctrine of "compassionate protectionism".
But among those stiffed by the President are pretty much everybody with troops on the ground fighting alongside the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne in Afghanistan - fellows like Australia, whose Prime Minister, John Howard, summed up his country's support for the US better than anyone else in the days after September 11: "This is no time to be an 80 per cent ally." No, indeed. Bush to Howard: You're now a 30 per cent ally.
Presumably, the Administration figures it can afford to slough off the Aussies. But this decision also flips the finger at the only two allies who really matter, Britain and Russia. Steel is important to Moscow, and it may yet prove significant in whether or not Tony Blair can bring his party with him on Iraq. But to hell with Blair, it also stiffs me.
I look outside at the impressive fleet of luxury Sports Utility Vehicles and rugged trucks parked in my yard and start musing on the replacement costs. Bush's "protectionist" measures will apparently add about $1 billion annually to the cost of buying cars and trucks.
Not for me, for the whole country, but even so: every American should wander round the house and take a look at how much stuff has got steel in it; George W Bush has just made all those things more expensive, and their manufacturers less competitive.
Whoever he's "protecting", it isn't the American people: for every steel-producing job these tariffs save, they'll cost 10 jobs in the steel-consuming sector. So, if it's any consolation to my conservative chums in Britain, the bastard's not doing anything for Americans with this decision either.
I wouldn't mind what's effectively the introduction of a covert sales tax: there's a war on and we must all make sacrifices. The problem is that this particular sales tax undermines the war effort - or, at any rate, the moral basis for it.
In the autumn, with America fretting over the economic consequences of September 11, the President declared that the attack on New York was an attack on "free trade". "We will keep our country open," he insisted, "and our markets open for business."
Well said. A couple of years back, I found myself in conversation with, ahem, a senior member of the Royal Family who opined that it was just awful that Rolls-Royce had been swallowed by Volkswagen. I like being an oleaginous royal suck-up as much as the next guy, but this was too much.
I replied that one of the refreshing aspects of US capitalism was its open-mindedness: when Daimler takes over Chrysler - manufacturers of the Jeep - Americans don't go around whining about the loss of this powerful national symbol and why doesn't the government intervene.
If you can make it, ship it and sell it, the American market is yours for the taking. As the Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill said, barely a week ago: "Freer trade can help stimulate growth: it fuels competition, and innovation."
But it doesn't stop there. Giving the rest of the planet access to G7 markets is the best way not only to improve the living standards of the world's poor, but also to bring them within the purview of civilised (or anyway non-deranged) nations.
Lest anyone doubt the relevance of this, consider that 50 years ago Egypt and South Korea had more or less identical per capita incomes. Today, Egypt's is less than 20 per cent of South Korea's. This isn't the leftie's lamebrain poverty-breeds-resentment argument: the fact that Egypt is a fetid backwater is nobody's fault but the Egyptians'.
South Korea, on the other hand, has transformed itself, and is a significant exporter of cheap steel to grateful American manufacturers. So Bush has chosen to penalise the Koreans - to blame the chronic sickness of the US steel industry on the foreign steel industry.
Scapegoating breeds resentment, and so it should. Free trade is the mitigating circumstance of America's unprecedented global hegemony: it says, "Yes, we're a behemoth never before seen in the history of the world, but you can grab a piece of that. We're loaded, sell us something."
Take that away and what you're left with is perilously close to the global bully The Guardian and the Euroweenies drone on about. If you're a Saudi loser who'd rather hole up in Tora Bora than put in a decent day's work, we'll drop a Daisycutter on you. But, if you're a wiry little Korean slogging away in the factory all week, we'll still screw you over.
Most Presidents get to pick their priorities. After September 11, Bush had no choice in his. But, six months on, it's increasingly clear that, on the non-war fronts the Bush presidency has died. His much-vaunted education bill was gutted by Ted Kennedy of anything meaningful.
On "campaign finance reform" - a racket Bush once dismissed as "unconstitutional" - he seems to lack the will to resist. And last Tuesday he pulled off the remarkable feat of making Bill Clinton look principled. With hindsight, Clinton had two bedrock convictions: he believed oral sex didn't qualify as adultery and he believed in free trade.
Bush, by contrast, thinks a little bit of union featherbedding doesn't count as political adultery, and will swing enough votes among the Red Robbos of the Appalachians to make the difference. Don't bet on it. Protectionism breeds ingrates.
By November, some pandering West Virginia Democrat will be agitating for 40 per cent tariffs. In 2004, Bush will win or lose for reasons entirely unconnected with an irrelevant, dying industry.
But, in the meantime, some of us conservatives are wondering: if he weren't slaughtering Islamofascist nutters in the Hindu Kush, why exactly would we support this guy? The sooner the invasion of Iraq starts, the better.
In my case, someone who voted for
a man who said he believed in free trade.
Steel Trap: How Subsidies and
Protectionism Weaken the U.S.
Steel Industry. On March 6 President
Bush is expected to announce
specific measures to further insulate
the domestic steel industry from import
competition. Although decades of protectionism
and subsidization have only hastened the
industry’s demise, steel companies have returned
to the trough, asking the administration to defy
basic economics and common sense.
Every 4 years the servants come to beg for our votes. We live in a "Representative Republic" and it is free to the extent that politicians are free to do the public will. They have no choice. Those that get elected and re-elected do as much of what they believe in as they have public support to do. They, being servants, must do what enough of what their bosses, the public, demands in order to get re-elected. If the pubic senses a candidate won't do what they want they will not elect him. And if after he is in office, he fails to do what the public wants, the public fires him.
This is a nation of the people, by the people and for the people. And if a politican fails to do what the people want, he will be run over by the people. Ask Jimmy Carter how that works.
Bush made a promise to the Steel workers in West Virginia that if they got him their 4 electoral votes and he was elected, they would get their tarrifs. It is the kind of promise servants often make. Clinton made the promise in 1992, 1996 and Gore did in 2000. Clinton did not keep his word, neither would Gore, but Bush did.
Styen if he thought rather than felt would have known that Bush would keep the promise made late in the 2,000 campaign. Without it Bush would not be president. But Steyn is a journalist and as such has no concept of keeping one's word. It is not a concept journalists understand.
Presidents from both sides of the spectrum enact what they and the public agree on. They also have to do what they don't agree with. When the public that elects them wants it they do it. When the public did not want health care Clinton could not get it done. When they wanted welfare reform, he knew far better than to oppose it.
The president is a servant. He is a public servant. Our representative republic is made up of states. And the candiddate that carries enough states will be president. It was a way that our founding fathers made to give Steel workers in WVA far more clout than their popular vote allowed. It was a way to control they trynany of the majority. It amazingly still works.
Men like Steyn look at men like Bush and Clinton as if they were the all powerful wizards of oz. They are not. They are our humble servants looking for votes.
What they do is try to please enough voters in the right states to get elected and re-elected.
Tator, you're a breath of fresh air, as usual.
This is a shot over the bow of big steel and big steel unions.
Three years from now, if they don't have their act together, Bush, in his second term, will pull the tariffs.
If Steyn deserts Bush over this, then he was a fair weather supporter in the first place.
Bush made a promise, and he kept it. I don't agree with this move, but I admire Bush for keeping a promise.
During peace, you can let an industry like steel shake itself out, but not now. There are several countries who are subsidizing their steel exports with their taxpayer money and we can't afford to let our industry slip off at a time when we might well need it. Yes, there is steel in a lot of things, cars, refrigerators, stuff, but it's also in planes, guns, and tanks.
Yep seems we all are subject to "ups and downs". Even Clinton had them while discussing with the congressman about putting the troops in action. So it seems Steyn maybe disappointed but he should learn that there will always disappointment if you place too much faith in the human which is fallible. But the sun will rise tommorrow and on into the future.
There's no doubt that politics played a part in this decision. But W also gave his word to the steel workers during the campaign that he would not ignore their plight.
So he kept his word.
Is it the decision I would have made? Probably not. I believe in free trade. But the President is a man of his word.
And so I don't agree with President Bush 100%. I don't agree with anyone 100%.
But that doesn't diminish my opinion of W in the least. So he made a political decision. Big deal.
Now if this became a pattern of protectionism, that would be another matter. But we all know he is a free trader. Steyn is pissed, but he will get over it. He'll be in the bandwagon as soon as we kill more islamofacists.
Oh Bush believes in free trade. Our nation is structured so politicians will do what the people in the states that can elect them want. What presidents actually do has next to nothing to do with what they believe.
As was proved in Hillary Health Care, Welfare Reform, and Steel Imports, it does not matter what the president believes, it matters what the people who have the power to elect him want done.
You are looking for a dictator who will agree with you and does it, no matter what the public wants. You and Alex Baldwin will have to leave the country to find that.
No president has the luxury of doing what he wants. The good thing about freedom is politicians have to please voters. And the electoral college puts power in the hands of voters in individual states.
If you don't want tarrifs you don't need to convince a president. That does no good. You have to convince his bosses. And his bosses are the people who will decide if he gets re-elected.
Policy is not controled by presidents. It is controlled by whoever can influence the public.
Bush always keeps his promises, or he doesn't make them. While I might have been more upset at this in peacetime, in war we MUST protect the steel industry.
At any rate, Mr. Steyn is looking at this as a non-citizen. Sorry he is disapppointed, but this is war.
If the public didn't want what he said he
believed in, he wouldn't have been elected
in the first place.
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