Steel Strikes a Blow against Free Trade. (Political Notebook)

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President George W. Bush has for years extolled the virtues of free trade, and his administration has worked hard to shape international circumstances likely to lead to open markets and encourage trading accords. Arguably, Bush already has done more to further free trade than Bill Clinton did during the eight years in which he failed to live up to the open-markets rhetoric of his campaign for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Despite the early defeatist advice of Charlene Barshefsky, Clinton's trade czar, the Bush administration has wrestled fast-track negotiating authority through the House and is being stymied only by the hold organized labor has on the Democratic leadership in the Senate. The Bush administration also had a successful summit in Quebec last year, marking the start of an effort to open the way for a …