WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 — President Bush is expected to announce this week that he will immediately lift most of the tariffs he placed on foreign steel in an effort to protect American industry, bowing to a ruling by the World Trade Organization that his administration had violated global trading rules, industry officials who have been in negotiations with the White House said on Sunday.
The possible announcement, first reported in Monday's issue of The Washington Post, could come on Monday, the officials said, when Mr. Bush is in Michigan to attend an economic event and raise money for the 2004 campaign. But he may wait until after a Tuesday trip to Pittsburgh, where the decision to accede to the trade organization ruling, even if accompanied by an expected threat by Mr. Bush to reimpose tariffs if there is a surge of low-cost foreign steel, will be deeply unpopular among steelworkers and owners of the American steel manufacturers.
The White House has said Mr. Bush may make no decision until a deadline in the middle of December. But industry officials who have been talking to White House economic officials say Mr. Bush's advisers have warned him that there is no way to avoid the billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs that Europe and Japan have threatened to impose on American goods if the tariffs are not lifted.
The Europeans would use retaliatory tariffs to strike at industries in states crucial to the 2004 election, for example, on Florida citrus, motorcycles produced in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and other products in states that Mr. Bush feels he must win in 2004.
One industry official who has been talking to the White House said he expected that Mr. Bush would try to make the best of his defeat by arguing that the main objective of the tariffs has been achieved: the American steel industry has consolidated significantly in the past 18 months, exactly the reorganization that Mr. Bush declared had to happen during the three-year life of the tariffs.
Under the trade organization's rules, the tariffs on foreign steel decline every year so that the domestic steel industry would face increasing pressure to become more efficient.
"He'll try to declare victory, as best we understand it," the industry official said. "But clearly, this could be politically costly."