Bush weighs lifting imported-steel tariffs

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President Bush will decide "in a reasonable period of time" whether tariffs to help the steel industry have worked and should be lifted.

"I'm in the process of reviewing the ... extent to which the industry has been restructured," he said yesterday at the White House.

Mr. Bush imposed duties on foreign steel in March 2002 to give U.S. producers breathing space as the industry consolidated and to shore up political support in steel-making states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

But the three-year program was unpopular with major trade partners, who protested at the World Trade Organization, and American companies that use steel to make finished products.

A WTO decision Monday allowed the 15-nation European Union, where foreign producers have been hardest hit, and other nations to retaliate against billions of dollars in U.S.-made exports.

The White House has closely guarded the decision-making process on the tariffs, though with the WTO decision the economic and political stakes have increased. Where the steel tariffs were designed to boost political support in key election states, the retaliation is targeted to hit back at equally important voter bases such as Florida, a big citrus producer, and the Carolinas, a major textile center.

The president can maintain the tariffs for a full three years, eliminate them or search for some compromise. Bush administration advisers have only hinted at what the president might decide.

Last week, a senior Commerce Department official said the administration faced a "stark" choice between completely lifting or maintaining the tariffs; this week, the administration's top trade envoy said they had helped the industry consolidate.

"Frankly, the safeguards gave the industry an opportunity to do what we hoped it would do," U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick said Wednesday.