EU scores steel victory over US

[Noordam]

BBC News

EU scores steel victory over US
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has confirmed that US tariffs on steel imports are illegal.
The WTO's announcement is a victory for the European Union (EU), and puts fresh pressure on the Bush administration to withdraw its import duties on steel.

The trade organisation, said the US measures were "inconsistent" with free trade agreements.

The EU has said it will hit US goods like Harley Davidson motor bikes with duties worth some $2.2bn (£1.31bn).

In its final verdict, the WTO appellate body upheld the decision of a panel of trade judges that the tariffs were not consistent with international trade rules.
..more at article....

[Spazito]

1. This puts Bush in a very interesting position....

does he ignore the ruling and keep the import duties and pay big penalties and have retaliatory import duties put on US products or does he remove the tariffs and upset the US steel manufacturers who are big donators to his campaign. I love seeing him between a rock and a hard place!

[stopbush]

2. Yep. If he removes the tariffs,

he pisses off red states like Ohio. If he continues them, the EU, Japan and others are planning on imposing 100% tariffs on imported US goods, effectively pricing them out of their markets. Moreover, the EU plans on targetting products being produced in states that are crucial to bush in 2004! Those damn intellectual Europeans!

Looks like the "adults" fucked up again.

The gang that couldn't shoot straight.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

3. They should target those swing states with tariffs!!!

Ha Ha Ha!!!!!

:)

[TAH6988]

4. Yep another loss

for unions and the manufactoring sector. Looks like we'll be importing more steel and putting more Americans out of work.

[madrchsod]

5. as a former steel worker

you are right. what`s left of the us steel industry has spent hundreds of millions to rebuild and modernize in the last few years and it looks like they won`t recover their investment. oh well we`ll just let fuck`n china build everything for us,who cares? nobody.

[DarkPhenyx]

9. So offer a better solution.

Find something workable that both sides can agree upon.

<on edit>

You should take note of this point from the article.

But the tariffs have also been heavily criticised by US manufacturers, who complain that their effect has been to push up steel prices, depressing profit margins and causing job losses.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

14. The tariffs are a net BAD

get rid of them.

[DarkPhenyx]

18. I agree.

Getting rid of tariffs across the board is the first step. Unfortunately, as it will be painful for certain groups of people, no one is willing to take that first step. politicians are particularly cowardly when it comes to making hard decisions that might cost them votes.

[Brian Sweat]

16. Shrub has a better plan.

It's called devaluation. Makes American products cheaper and foreign products more expensive. You don't mind a little double digit inflation do you?

[DarkPhenyx]

8. Either that or...

...our goods won't be selling overseas. It isn't an easy choice. However it is one that we have put ourselves into over the years with corporate greed combined with union greed, driven by consumer greed and gluttony.

[Fovea]

7. For an entire year

I have been saying that the EU and China can bring us to our knees without a bomb dropped or a shot fired. BushCo had to know that this would happen.

For Bechtel, Halliburton, or Carlysle to win means that they will be a rich upper class in a poor and chronically underemployed America.
They are a conspiricy of resource monopolists and militarists. They do not need consumerism much longer, when they control oil and water, and the right to pollute the air and land, as well.

Watch them break labor's knees via poverty in 05. Riots and martial law in 06.
I do expect some of the problem their party had in '36 with John Ashcroft playing the role of Himmler, Rummy as Goering, Ernst Rhoem will be played by Powell. Karl Rove, of course is Goebbels.

This will re-align the US with Central and South America, our trade will be shifting to our partners in the middle eastern land grab.
We will be nationalizing out heavy industry soon anyway, and the draft will produce very nearly full employment. Protecting our ME oil, and keeping our hold on Vzhuelan oil will keep us in a state of war for the next half century, while we suck all easily suckable oil out of the ground.

Red states are irrelevant. They will deliver for their Gauleiters via Diebold. They control the system and they count the votes.

PNAC wants to build a second Roman Empire. What they will give us is another hundred years war.

[lumpy]

6. The EU will fight the US corporate/political

greed using economic the economic tool. This will be beneficial to help bring down sprawling ambitious groups the likes of Carlyle and other Fascist factions. Hopefully.

[HereSince1628]

10. EU Corporations are behind this so let's be honest about

what is going on. Governments everywhere are being pushed by corporations to wield the free trade stick.

[DarkPhenyx]

11. Yup! They are.

maybe it'll actually work out that we really get free trade. Wouldn't that be a hoot.

[Fovea]

12. true

but some governments are pushing back.

[truthspeaker]

13. in my (grossly uninformed) opinion...

The current push towards free trade is flawed because it seeks to open markets on every commodity and product, including currency, except labor. Corporations can move jobs to whatever country has the lowest labor costs, but most workers cannot cross borders and look for work where they can get paid more. Besides the fairness problems, from an economic standpoint when governments single out one factor to regulate - in this case labor - without looking at how it affects the big picture everything gets out of whack.

[jpgray]

15. Welcome to DU, truthspeaker

You sum up the problem pretty well.

[HereSince1628]

17. Really its worse than just losing jobs, and that's terrible

but democracy is also at risk.

The way it stands, a corporation can complain that a country's environmental standards are barriers to free trade, and if the
WTO court of opinion prevails that country can be forced to change laws that were decided "locally" to standards of an extra-governmental outside body.

If the victim country is a democracy, then WTO is anti-democratic, but its at least anti-national sovreignity. Its corporate tyranny for a "new world order."

The US can stand up to much of this bullying, but little countries haven't got a chance. Rather than bringing modernization and raising standards of the developing world, WTO when misadministered, raises corporations above nations, and essentially impresses developing naions into their service.

So...here is an absolutely over the top worst case...imagine that EU manufacturers of bottled water complain that publicly held water utilities represent monopolies. As such local governments could be in violation of WTO and forced to privatize the local water supply. Frankly, I'm liberal enough to believe that some products and services should remain in the public domain. Air and water ought to be among those, and the food and shelter of free people ought to be held to safety/quality standards determined by those people, not by foreign corporations. If you think Bush & and his profiteers wouldn't sell the nation's water supplies, you need to think again.
There have already been several projets suggested to pump water from the great lakes region as far west as Nebraska.

Losing jobs is awful, losing sovreignity will be catastrophic.

[slaveplanet]

19. heresince is right

but more specifically than EU,Germany....they are the movers behind the EU. I seem to remember they were conquered 57 years ago. At least thats what the talking heads and historians want us to believe. The awful truth is they were never completely dissassembled economically(see operation safehaven). What we are now seeing is the culmination of a long range plan , where illegal NFC was spirited away and used to secretly refund the German economic juggernaut. Like the pheonix rising from the ashes the reunification of Germany and now the formation of the EU, Germany will be the dominant force once again. More important than Steel tariffs , Our main problem is Machine Tools. This is what made America dominant. In the world today,take per se Germany,the premier supplier of highend machine tools(these aren't hand drills,I'm talking about the essential machines used to outfit factorys, machines that make machines)Germany's government runs these companies. Although it's not on the books to appear this way, the German(and many others) govt supplements these vital backbones of any economy through the lean times. The US lets the market forces take their toll on these vital companies through lean times. Bush needs to counterpunch with this, but he won't. BFEE are criminally involved with these forces from the get go. They have no intention of salvaging any type of manufacturing in the US, These evil forces want the US to become a fully dependent service economy (we're already 87% there) in order to bring the entire world into rule by one governing body. (and it taint going to be us in charge, we'll only be the gestapo military enforcement arm of the world)

question? what runs germany?