President Bush has decreed that the steel tariffs ended at midnight Dec. 4, 16 months ahead of schedule. He apparently has decided to alienate the steel-producing states in favor of the steel-using states (such as Michigan). His “handlers” assure us there was no political consideration in this decision. The steel workers have doubts.

This administration, and most other politicians, seems to have decided that it’s inevitable that all U.S. manufacturing jobs will be lost to other countries.

The businesses involved don’t mind; it’s the bottom line that counts. They can’t waste their time worrying about the U.S. workers who are displaced. Why pay someone in Maine $10 an hour or so to make shirts and shoes when you can get someone in China to do it for 60 cents an hour?

Those jobs that can’t be sent overseas can be filled with immigrants – legal and illegal – who drive down wages. It seems to me that this all won’t end until wages and living conditions in the United States are equal to those of the third-world countries who are sending their citizens here.

John H. Frecker

Baileyville