Steel Tariffs Appear to Have Backfired on Bush (WashPost): In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection. Eighteen months later, key administration officials have concluded that Bush’s order has turned into a debacle. Some economists say the tariffs may have cost more jobs than they saved, by driving up costs for automakers and other steel users. Politically, the strategy failed to produce union endorsements and appears to have hurt Bush with workers in Michigan and Tennessee -- also states at the heart of his 2004 strategy.... White House officials said Bush will not make a decision until he has digested the ITC reports. But his top economic advisers have united to recommend that the tariffs be lifted or substantially rolled back this fall, and several administration officials said it is likely he will go along. The retreat would roil the political and economic landscape of the Rust Belt, where both parties expect the presidential election to be won and lost. It also could produce a tidal wave of negative publicity in West Virginia, a traditionally Democratic state that Bush won by 6 percentage points, and Pennsylvania, which Bush lost by 5 percentage points and had targeted as one of his most promising possible pickups for 2004.
Music File Sharers Keep Sharing (NYT): Despite the lawsuits filed last week against 261 people accused of illicitly distributing music over the Internet, millions of others continue to copy and share songs without paying for them. ast week, more than four million Americans used KaZaA, the most popular file-sharing software, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, only about 5 percent fewer than the week before the record industry’s lawsuits became big news. One smaller service, iMesh, even experienced a slight uptick in users. The sweeping legal campaign appears to be educating some file swappers who did not think they were breaking the law and scaring some of those who did. But the barrage of lawsuits has also highlighted a stark break between the legal status of file sharing in the United States and the apparent cultural consensus on its morality.
Posted by Mises.org News
