By Lara Jakes Jordan
The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH - Steelworker Andy Miklos is so happy with President Bush's tariffs on foreign-made steel that the card-carrying Democrat is considering casting his first vote for a Republican next year.

In Michigan, meanwhile, auto parts manufacturer Dennis Keat is threatening to defect from the GOP if the White House doesn't drop the sanctions immediately.

Both voters are emblematic of their industries 18 months after Bush slapped steep tariffs on imported steel to shield domestic producers from foreign competition. The president's next step in the process - keep the tariffs until they expire in March 2005 or eliminate them - could be crucial to Bush's re-election prospects in 2004.

Steel tariffs are pitting the Midwest states against the Rust Belt - two regions where the margin between the Republican candidate and Democrat Al Gore was a hair's breadth in 2000.

The sanctions endeared the GOP president to traditionally Democratic steelworkers in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. But coming on the heels of a slumping economy, the tariffs have since angered owners and employees of small manufacturing companies that make up part of his GOP base in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Those states rank high on the list for Bush and collectively account for almost one-third of the 270 electoral votes he needs to win re-election. Bush and his political advisers are "going to make people angrier now then they would have 18 months ago - no matter what they do," said Ken Mayer, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and expert on presidential politics. Miklos, 53, not only works for U.S. Steel, the nation's largest domestic steel producer, he is president of his United Steelworkers of America local. Although the union has endorsed Democrat Dick Gephardt for president, Miklos said he would break with his union brethren and back Bush if the tariffs stay in place.

Keat, the 52-year-old owner of the Su-Dan Company in Rochester Hills, Mich., has furloughed 10 percent of his work force - about 25 employees - in the last three years in part because of rising costs of steel, which his company uses to make car door handles and other parts.

"If Bush does not do away with the tariffs, I'm going to have to think very, very strongly about not voting for him," said Keat, a staunch Republican.