malamute wrote: >I think a country's overall steel production should closely match what their >needs are. > As a country with huge reserves of iron ore and coal, and precious little manufacturing base, you can imagine we are quite keen to produce more steel than we can use - exporting steel is one of the things we do, just like oil from Arabia, gold from South Africa, or coffee from Brazil. It's not like it's an accident and we are dumping the excess.
>Are we really the only country on the face of the planetwho has placed >restrictions on imports? I know that ours are the only ones people >remember. The bad will always outweigh the good. I'm used to the concept >by now, but it still stings. > US restrictions aren't the ones people remember (Japan rates pretty highly!), the situation in this case is that the US (and Dubya in particular) is seen as a proponent of free trade. It's not the tariff, it's the statement that America wants everyone to open up free trade, and by the way, we're gonna hit you with a tariff on imports. If Europe had done this, we would all just roll our eyes and say "typical, there they go again", but from the US it goes against what you've been preaching. Cheers Russell C.
