WASHINGTON — Though fine-tuned to the complexities of a single industry, President Bush's decision on steel tariffs could become a factor in national politics with control of Congress at stake this year and the White House in 2004.
Generally an advocate of free trade, Bush faced a dilemma on this issue. U.S. steelmakers argued that heavily subsidized foreign competition was victimizing their industry. If he disregarded them, the president might have paid a price politically in several states important to his chances for reelection.
His decision to impose a range of tariffs on some imported steel products did not give the domestic industry all the protection it had sought, but it pleased many of the industry's allies--including the politically important steelworkers' union--and bought the GOP a large measure of goodwill in those swing states.
Many Republicans asserted with satisfaction that Bush had in one stroke done more to help the industry than his Democratic predecessor had in eight years--a contrast they will undoubtedly drive home in steel-producing states such as West Virginia and Pennsylvania in upcoming elections.
"It's clear that putting Bush on the side of steelworkers and U.S. jobs and working-class Americans is a political plus," said Stuart Rothenberg, a Washington political analyst. "It's a clear political win for Bush, to be able to go into those states, go to members of Congress and say, 'Look what I did for you and your folks.' "
To be sure, there were critics of the steel decision. Some Democrats said Bush did not go far enough. Many Republicans would have preferred little or no action. But their objections were muted.
"Certainly what the president did could have been worse," said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), an ardent free-trader. But the allegiance of Gramm's state to Bush, former governor of Texas, is not in doubt.
The president stands to gain from Tuesday's action in West Virginia, a traditionally Democratic state, where he scored an upset over Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000 by capturing 52% of the vote. And Bush is seeking to wrest Pennsylvania, which Gore won with 51%, into the Republican column. Both states have been hit hard by the decline of the U.S. steel industry.
"Those West Virginians and Pennsylvanians are not unimportant to [Bush's] political objectives in the longer haul," said Thomas Mann, a scholar of the presidency and Congress at the Brookings Institution. For Bush loyalists, every state matters as the president seeks to build on his narrow electoral victory in 2000 after losing the popular vote.
