EU condemns Bush's 'Wild West' steel tariffs

THE European Union condemned President Bush’s “Wild West” attitude to global trade laws yesterday and vowed to retaliate with every legitimate weapon including, if necessary, punitive sanctions on US products worth roughly $2.5 billion (£1.75 billion).
Leading a worldwide chorus of protests, Brussels insisted that there were no legal or economic grounds for Mr Bush’s imposition of 30 per cent tariffs on steel imports, only his desire to appease a powerful domestic steel lobby whose support he needed for electoral purposes.

“This is a case where Americans have clearly given preference to their domestic political interests over and above the international rules they have signed up to,” Pascal Lamy, the EU’s Trade Commissioner, said. He expressed astonishment that a US Administration ostensibly committed to free trade should have acted in such a cynical way. In a dig at the President’s Texan origins, he told a press conference: “The worldwide steel market is not the Wild West, where everybody does what they like. There are disciplinary rules.”