HYPOCRISY CIRCLES THE SUBSIDY HABIT

摘要

How typically hypocritical for the European Union to answer America's (hypocritical) high steel tariffs with-high steel tariffs. After all, at one time or another European steelmakers have run through the full Monty of bad economic policies: cartels, collusive behaviour, subsidies, quotas, anti-dumping protectionism. As Patrick Messerlin of the Institut d'Eudes Politiques de paris wrote last year, the history of Europe's steel industry "may be one of the best illustrations of the magnified costs of trade barriers in a non-competitive environment".But the story is not so simple many of Europe's worst protectionist measures over the years-and certainly today-have been responses to protectionism from the American side of the Atlantic. And in US markets, European steelmakers have been fighting off protectionist pressures form uncompetitive US mills for more than 50 years.