United States To Re-Examine Steel Tariffs In Eighteen Months

by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York

19 April 2002

The US Ambassador to the European Union, Rockwell Schnabel, has attempted to pour oil on the troubled waters of the international dispute over steel import tariffs, designed to protect America's ailing steel industry.

Speaking to the Financial Times Deutschland yesterday, Mr Schnabel took a (relatively) conciliatory tone on the issue, revealing that the United States would be reviewing the tariffs in eighteen months.

'It could then be decided to keep (the tariffs), to abolish them or to change them,' he told the newspaper, adding that the country would accept a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling on the matter.

It remains to be seen whether this change of tone in the negotiations will mollify trading partners such as the EU, China, Japan, and South Korea, which were antagonised by what they saw as a 'protectionist' move on the part of the Bush administration earlier this year.

However, it can do no more to inflame the situation than recent remarks made by US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who described the possibiliity of retaliatory EU sanctions on American steel as a 'nuclear weopon' against the WTO.

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