Never put a poet in charge of the economy (chairman Mao Zedong), or, it would increasingly seem, George W Bush.
Bush's decision to impose tariffs on steel, while no way as disastrous as Mao's own foray into self-sufficiency in steel (the Great Leap Forward) does raise questions and got me to thinking about tariffs in general.
Given the US's ideological commitment to free trade, the recent move cannot help but look hypocritical.
In this respect it is interesting to turn the clock back to the Victorian free trade era. At this time, Britain, with its unrivalled naval power, and its ideological commitment to free trade and pure capitalism, was exactly analogous to the US today.
Indeed, Britain encouraged the rest of the world to adopt free trade, although with considerably less success than the US, which has done so through bodies it has inspired such as the WTO and GATT. Just before the First World War, according to League of Nations figures, the average German tariff rate was still 12%, and the average for France was 18%.
Britain, on the other hand, stuck to its free trade principles and imposed tariffs at a rate of ZERO, according to historian Niall Ferguson. Benchmarked against this, the US's track record as the standard bearer of free trade in 2002 looks somewhat sobering.
The US, on the other hand, also holds the record for imposing the most tariffs in the shortest time. Between October 1929 and June 1930 the Smoot-Hawley Bill specified duties on no fewer than 21,000 items.
At this point, even Britain succumbed to tariffs, imposing its own in 1932, as the world drowned itself in protectionism.
Tariffs can be economically justified only based on the infant industry argument - as first proposed by the economist Friedrich List in the 1840s. However, the infant industry argument cannot be applied to steel, which has existed as an industry in the US for well over a century. Indeed, when imposed in such cases a tariff is more akin to an indirect tax on consumers.
And as the Swedish Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna said of indirect taxes, they are "pleasing to God, hurtful to no man, and not provocative of rebellion". In Congress, that is.
As an aside, it is also interesting to compare Victorian Britain's and contemporary America's zeal for low tax economies. At its lowest rate in the 1870s, the standard rate of British income tax was less than 1%. Indeed, even at the eve of the First World War it was just under 6%. Again a sobering comparison.
Then again, contemporary America doesn't have children sweeping chimneys.
