When Bush announced his immoral, ill-advised, counter-productive, politcially transparent steel tariffs, I had a cow. Many others joined me in my outrage. Hopefully we will have the same result from all the free-traders in the blogosphere in regards to this outrageous pandering on the part of Sen. Kerry in West Virginia:
Kerry also played to some West Virginia issues. He said he’d boost funding for clean-coal technology and criticized President Bush for not extending steel tariffs, saying the president “broke his promise on steel, he broke his promise on illegal dumping.”
The ball is in your court, folks. And yes, Big Media Matt- your past position on Bush’s tariffs dovetails nicely with this post on intellectual honesty.
Of course- there is no telling what Kerry really thinks about the issue:
In the Senate, John Kerry understood the importance of trade. He bucked the prevailing trends in his party to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), to give China normal trade-relations status, and to support presidential trade-promotion authority. Yet during the primaries, Kerry abandoned the pro-trade New Democrat center in favor of the isolationist fringe. He disavowed his vote for NAFTA and promised to revisit all current U.S. free-trade agreements. He proudly declared that there was no difference between himself and the protectionist Senator Edwards on trade.
Jussi H
A big part of Bush’s reason for dumping the steel tariffs was the threat of European retaliation in form of counter-tariffs.
So is Kerry now suggesting that US should go unilateral on the rest of the world,even if it would provoke a trade war?
Don’t bet on it.
Skip Perry
Things just get worse and worse. I knew I’d have to hold my nose voting for Kerry, but not so hard that it hurt.
Kimmitt
Egad. ABB, but I miss the days when I looked forward to voting with pride rather than resignation.
Sebastian Holsclaw
The ruling against steel tariffs was a part of the multi-lateral process. Surely Bush can’t be expected to go against world opinion again. Especially on something so unimportant as tariffs.