- Rust Belt, Encyclopedia.com.
2. The decision by President George Bush to impose steel import tariffs may be a betrayal of his proclaimed free trade instinct, and a flashpoint for a possible international trade war. But in domestic political terms, they make perfect sense.
As the former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously remarked: “All politics is local.” In the case of steel, Mr Bush is less concerned with providing more fuel for foreign critics of American unilateralism, than in shoring his own and his party’s prospects at elections, above all in a handful of traditional steel industry states which could hold the key for victory.
In eight months, Mr Bush’s Republicans go into Congressional elections in which the stakes could not be higher. A gain of one seat will give them back control of the Senate. If they lose just six seats in the House, the Democrats would regain the majority there they lost in 1994. Analysts say at least six seats in 2002 could be decided by the steel issue in the former “rust belt”, most notably in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. In 2004 these states could decide Mr Bush’s future tenure of the White House.
Last time around, Mr Bush carried Ohio, but narrowly lost Pennsylvania. Most crucial of all was West Virginia, formerly a Democratic stronghold, but whose five electoral votes gave Mr Bush his tiny electoral college majority, not least because of the local steel and coal industry’s fear of the environmental policies of Al Gore.
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