U.S. Loses Appeal On Steel Tariffs
WTO Decision Lets EU Retaliate

By Paul Blustein and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 11, 2003; Page A01

The World Trade Organization issued a final ruling yesterday that the steel tariffs imposed by President Bush violate international trade rules, raising expectations that the White House will soon repeal the tariffs to avoid imminent European retaliation.

The WTO decision gives the European Union and several other countries the right to impose retaliatory tariffs on billions of dollars worth of American exports unless Bush reverses the decision he made in March 2002 to give American steelmakers protection from imports. Such sanctions could be the largest ever applied in a WTO case.

That leaves Bush with an unpleasant political choice less than a year before the next presidential election. If he abides by the WTO ruling and rolls back the steel tariffs, he would anger voters in key steelmaking states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. But if he maintains the tariffs, he would risk angering industries in other states that would be hurt by the retaliatory duties. The EU's list of targeted products includes many that were clearly chosen for their political impact: Tariffs on citrus fruit, for example, would hit the pocketbooks of voters in Florida, and the duties on textiles would hit industries based in the Carolinas.