"The Chinese Government welcomed the rejection by U.S. President George W. Bush of a request to impose quotas on steel pipe imported from China, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said Monday. This is the fourth time that the president decided not to place quotas on Chinese exports to the United States."

[Ed: Despite receiving strong representations by both employers and employees of the US steel industry from time to time, the Bush administration knows what side of the bread the American economy is now buttered. As long as America cannot export enough consumer goods to the rest of the world to neutralise its growing trade deficits, and as long as China continues to buy Treasury Bonds in large quantities every month to save the US government from bankruptcy, then America's dependency on China will continue to grow -- whatever silly things spokesmen like Rumsfeld and hysterical Republican Senators may say about China from time to time.]