The Politics of Steel. Rove looked at this before the decision was made.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Electorally, this move makes sense
'04 considerations are seen in decision
By Anne E. Kornblut, Boston Globe Staff, 12/5/2003
WASHINGTON -- President Bush faced a stark political choice as he mulled the decision to lift tariffs on steel imports: Would it be better to infuriate steelworkers who wanted to keep the tax, or manufacturers who would suffer if he abolished it?
A quick glance at the electoral map shows it was not a close call.
Important protariff areas include Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio -- key battleground states whose Electoral College votes total 46 of the 270 Bush needs to win reelection next year.
On the other side, Bush risked triggering a $2.2 billion trade war with European nations and Asian nations if he did not repeal the tax, which in turn would have hurt states that rely on exports -- including Florida, which sells citrus overseas, and the Carolinas, which produce textiles. And another critical state, Michigan, is a big consumer of steel, heightening the auto industry's desire to see the tariff end.
Added together, those four states alone amount to 67 electoral votes. And in the end, they got their wish.
US trade representative Robert B. Zoellick, who endured a deluge of accusations yesterday that the decision had been made solely on Bush's electoral needs, said: "Look, my job involves international politics, domestic politics, economics. So in that sense, sure, the politics are part of trying to accomplish an agenda."
Zoellick said Bush's reelection campaign was not discussed in any meetings about steel that he attended.
Other White House advisers said that politics played only a marginal role. They contended the tax was always intended as a temporary measure to protect the steel industry and help it regain its stability, which has since, they said, been accomplished.
"This is a victory for the economy as a whole, but especially for steel-consuming manufacturers and their 12 million employees," Representative Joe Knollenberg, Republican of Michigan, said. "It is my hope that this is the first step toward a revitalization of manufacturing in this country."
But even Representative Phil English, Republican of Pennsylvania, acknowledged that Bush had made a "politically difficult decision to safeguard our steelworkers as long as he did," by imposing the tax in the first place. And it was clear from the responses across the political landscape -- from Congress to the Democratic presidential contenders -- that the issue would have an impact on politics, even if it had not been driven solely by electoral considerations.
For 20 months, Bush had imposed the import tax on steel, to the delight of two states that came through for him in the last race: In 2000, Bush stunned Democrats by winning West Virginia, a task he accomplished by visiting there repeatedly and wooing its coal industry along with steelworkers; he also carried Ohio, beating Gore 50 to 46 percent there -- and many expect Ohio to play a critical role in the next campaign. Bush lost Pennsylvania but has hoped to make inroads there, visiting nearly two dozen times as president.
Now, though, Bush is siding with several states that he did not win, especially Florida and Michigan. Although Bush ultimately won Florida's electoral votes, along with the Carolinas, he lost Michigan to Senator John S. McCain in the primary and to Vice President Gore in the general election. At the same time, other states that are considered less competitive, particularly California, would have been hurt by a trade war, making Bush's political task much harder if he had not lifted the tax.
Trade has become one of the few issues in the Democratic primary that has truly divided the field, with several candidates attacking free trade agreements and low international labor standards as a core reason for unemployment in the United States.
The Democrats yesterday attacked Bush from both sides. "The president's action today demonstrates a callous disregard for the workers and the communities whose jobs and livelihoods have been decimated by unfair competition," said Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. Meanwhile, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, a free trade advocate who objected to the original tax, accused Bush of having "put politics first when he imposed the tariffs, and now he's been forced to back-flip when confronted by life in the real world."
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean said in a written statement: "The president's decision to lift the steel tariffs early is just another example of this administration playing politics with peoples' lives. When he imposed the tariffs, the president's rhetoric suggested that he actually cared about American steelworkers . . . If that were the case, he would not be lifting them today."
boston.com |
