Steel Yourself for Inconsistency
22 February 2007
Editor, Baltimore Sun
To the Editor:
You rightly criticize the Antitrust Division's requirement that, as a condition of merging with Arcelor, Mittal Steel sell its Sparrows Point mill ("Getting the Point," Feb. 22). But you miss an acute incongruity behind this requirement: the world steel market is so competitive that U.S. steel makers must sometimes be protected from it.
Or, at least, the Bush administration thought so in 2002 when it raised tariffs on steel imports in the hope that protection from low prices on the world market would enable U.S. steel producers to "restructure." Do these producers now have such dreadful market power that Arcelor Mittal cannot be trusted to keep the mill at Sparrows Point? I doubt it - but if so, surely part of the blame rests with President Bush.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, Baltimore Sun
To the Editor:
You rightly criticize the Antitrust Division's requirement that, as a condition of merging with Arcelor, Mittal Steel sell its Sparrows Point mill ("Getting the Point," Feb. 22). But you miss an acute incongruity behind this requirement: the world steel market is so competitive that U.S. steel makers must sometimes be protected from it.
Or, at least, the Bush administration thought so in 2002 when it raised tariffs on steel imports in the hope that protection from low prices on the world market would enable U.S. steel producers to "restructure." Do these producers now have such dreadful market power that Arcelor Mittal cannot be trusted to keep the mill at Sparrows Point? I doubt it - but if so, surely part of the blame rests with President Bush.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Wednesday October 24, 2007 at 5:19pm