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President George Bush is preparing to revoke the steel tariffs.
It could be the death knell for West Virginia steel producers and workers.
Forty American steel companies have gone bankrupt, and many of the remaining companies are facing bankruptcy in the
wake of world trade agreements.
"We have seen a president ready to invade foreign countries to combat military terrorism. We are now seeing that same
president cave in to economic terrorism," said David Gossett, a spokesman for the 3,000-member Independent
Steelworkers Union.
The economic "terrorism" is legal, covered by dozens of trade agreements signed by the United States government.
The collapse of West Virginia's steel industry is on the fast track through NAFTA, GATT and other world trade
agreements. Millions of manufacturing jobs besides steel have been shifted abroad, where labor is cheap, there are little or
no benefits, and few environmental controls.
The "free trade" concept was based on creating trading partners, but the US is importing billions of dollars worth of good
and services, proportionally selling little abroad.
The European Union is threatening to impose $2.2 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, with the world trade courts
saying the tariffs are a violation of the trade agreements.
Bush imposed the tariffs in March 2002 to help U.S. steel producers, after foreign countries dumped under wholesale
steel on the US market.
Though the International Trade Commission found U.S. producers had been harmed by the so-called dumping of steel, the
World Trade Organization later deemed the U.S. tariffs illegal.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said workers have a right to feel betrayed. If reports of the rollback are true, he said,
"then President Bush has broken his promise to American steelworkers."
West Virginia Democrats voted for Bush and cast its five electoral votes in 2000 after he and Vice President Dick Cheney
campaigned in the state, offering sympathetic words and promises to help the steel industry more than the Clinton
administration had. | 
