Clintonista Ehrlich make some fine points concerning the steel tariffs imposed by Bush last year:

Twenty months ago, the Bush administration determined that imports of steel were injuring our domestic steel industry and proceeded to impose tariffs on those imports.

The European Union, a target of the tariffs, complained to the World Trade Organization, asking it to declare the tariffs illegal under the WTO rules the United States long ago signed on to. The WTO last week agreed with the EU and laid out a choice for Washington: Either get rid of the tariff or the Europeans will have the right to impose retaliatory tariffs. And they will impose them.

From the get-go, the steel tariffs were foolish. Steel imports were declining when the tariffs were imposed, and the tariffs were arbitrarily imposed on some foreign producers (Europe) but not others (Canada and Mexico).

Moreover, there were better ways to help steel workers directly - like picking up the tab for steel companies' "legacy costs," such as pensions and retirement health coverage. That might cost a few billion bucks, but it would be cheaper than making the entire economy pay for higher prices for steel.

Anyone in business understands that you don't improve an industry's prospects by removing the competition. In fact, for every job in the steel industry that might have been saved, more than one has probably been lost in industries like autos or construction, which pay more for protected steel now that imports are penalized.

I believe imposing the tariffs were bad policy from the beginning, maybe as bad as the education bill Bush harped with Chappaquiddick Teddy. If an industry can't thrive on its own, it should change the way it does business. The industry needs to get the unions out and streamline to be more competitive in the world market. This is a battle that the administration should not fight. Of course the former Clinton Kool-aid drinker couldn't help himself, he had to take the usual cheap shot:

And underneath all of this is a growing fear by the U.S. business community that the United States is rapidly isolating itself in the world community. It started by walking away from international agreements on climate change and a world criminal court. It presented the world with a unilateralist doctrine in the Iraq war and rejected the concern that our involvement there was precipitous, if not ill conceived (and is now coming back to the rest of the world, palms up). Now we risk embarking on a trade war in support of our unilateral right to pick which of our obligations we will honor.

Pulling out of Kyoto and spurning the world criminal court were two of the smartest things that the administration has done.