The steel decision was especially damaging to Mr. Bush and the trading order, because it was his first major trade decision made under domestic pressure. The world was watching for a precedent, all the more so because it knows Mr. Bush is sitting on an 80% approval rating--a rating that has something to do with a reputation, now tarnished, for standing on principle. Instead of acting like the world's economic leader, Mr. Bush behaved like a parochial Congressman.

Mr. Bush's main trade advisers haven't helped by trying to justify the decision in the most crass political terms. Trade Rep Bob Zoellick went to Brazil last week and admitted the decision was a sop to the Rust Belt, just the thing to enhance his negotiating credibility. Commerce trade official Grant Aldonas sounded like the Congressional staffer he used to be by suggesting that U.S. agriculture and computer chips might be next up for protection. "We have told people over time that if you don't see stronger growth abroad, you end up seeing friction on the trade account," he said. These guys are making Mr. O'Neill sound like a statesman.

And all to help the large and inefficient integrated U.S. steel mills that can't be saved in any case. National Steel, the nation's fourth-largest producer, filed for bankruptcy just a day after the Bush decision. Thirty-one other steel companies have done the same since the end of 1997, and Standard & Poor's responded to the tariffs by refusing to raise the industry's credit ratings.

Meanwhile, Tyson Foods, which was selling Russia 20 million pounds of chicken a week, has seen its earnings estimates drop with that country's retaliatory tariff. And U.S. manufacturers that rely on imported steel are facing tough times too. The Commerce Department has received about 1,000 requests for tariff exemptions so far, many from the likes of Precision Tube Technology of Houston, which makes oil drilling equipment with specialty steel it buys from France.