If the Bush administration defies the WTO ruling, the European Union has a list of $2.2 billion of U.S. exports on which it will impose tariffs of up to 30 percent, shutting many products out of Europe. There could be an additional $4 billion in EU sanctions if Congress does not repeal U.S. export subsidies -- more corporate welfare -- that the WTO has ruled illegal.

Japan and other nations also have lists of targeted U.S. products. Textiles, sunglasses, pantyhose and other clothing, wine, hunting weapons and other sporting goods, farm equipment, toilet paper, ballpoint pens, boats -- these and other U.S. products are on foreign governments' lists tailored to serve domestic interests in each country. But the EU does not disguise the fact that it is targeting U.S. products from swing states Bush will target in 2004.

One targeted product is motorcycles made in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Bush lost Wisconsin's 11 electoral votes by just 5,708 votes.

Another targeted product is apples. Last year Washington state produced 60 percent of America's apples. Bush lost Washington's 11 electoral votes by 138,788 votes. Another targeted product is citrus fruit, nearly 80 percent of which comes from Florida, whose 25 (now 27) electoral votes Bush won by 537 votes.

In an election year, or in the year before an election year -- that is, in any year -- it is difficult for democracies to be governed sensibly, given the political class' preoccupation with cobbling together majorities from factions receiving government favoritism. Fortunately, the WTO has presented the president with an excuse to retreat from the futility of trying to erect a wall between the steel industry and reality. That protection comes at the expense of the 99.9 percent of Americans who are not steelworkers whose jobs are endangered.

A steel executive warns against ``buckling'' to the WTO. Buckling? To an institution the United States helped to create in order to promote the free trade policies favored by every U.S. administration since the Second World War?

Alas, Bush may be tempted to play the national security card by arguing that tariffs are necessary because, well, tanks need steel. Five months after 9/11 he told a cattlemen's convention that agriculture subsidies are national security measures because ``this nation has got to eat.'' That is nonsense, but entertaining.