The decision of the American President, George Bush, to impose a 30 per cent tariff on imports of flat steel products, and a range of lesser tariffs on other steels, led to anger from two opposing groups: apologists of free market economics, to whom the US has always been the model to which other nations should aspire; and left-wingers, who argued that Australia should sever its strategic links with a nation which treated its allies in this way.Neither response is helpful or appropriate. The fac…
