Everybody leads with President Bush's decision yesterday to immediately lift tariffs on foreign steel, a major policy reversal that looks to avert an international trade war but that could cost votes in industrial states key to Bush's re-election.

Bush, who approved the tariffs 21 months ago, announced in a written statement that he would rescind them immediately—15 months before they were due to expire—because they had already done their job to boost a slumping U.S. steel industry. Yet, judging by the papers, nobody buys that spin.

The decision, though long expected, marked a major about-face for an administration not necessarily known for such reversals, the Washington Post says. The tariffs had been conceived not only as a way to boost the steel industry but also to give the GOP a much-needed boost in the Rust Belt. Yet, as everybody notes, the tariffs didn't end up making anyone happy, not even the steel workers, who felt the White House had stepped in too late.

As many jobs were lost in industries that buy steel as were saved in mill towns such as Cleveland, says the Los Angeles Times, which has the best big picture analysis this morning of the decision and what it all means. The administration alienated other nations in the broader push for free trade. And, ironically, steel workers ended up endorsing a Democrat for president anyway. "It turned out to be messy if not self-defeating politics," a trade analyst tells the LAT.

As expected, the president's decision elicited anger from industrial-state lawmakers and from the head of the United Steelworkers of America, who said Bush had committed a "sorry betrayal" of steelworkers and would regret the move come Election Day.

The New York Times, meanwhile, takes a moment to appreciate the Karl Rove-like moves of the World Trade Organization and the European Union, which determined that the best way to beat back the tariffs would be to go after American exports from states deemed more crucial to Bush's re-election efforts, such as Florida citrus and Michigan's automobiles. "For the first time in his nearly three years in office, the president, who has often reveled in the exercise of American power, finally met an international organization that had figured out how to hit back at the administration where it would hurt," the Times notes.

Rumors of a return mission to the Moon earn front-page mentions today in the WP and USA Today. As reported yesterday, administration officials tell the papers they are considering the moon mission among a list of "unifying national goals" heading into re-election year. Other goals could include promoting longevity or fighting childhood hunger or illness. Not surprisingly, the campaign is being devised by Rove, the WP says, and White House aides are said to be relishing the idea of a "Kennedy moment" for Bush. The only catch: Bush aides are wary of repeating a mistake that Daddy made back in 1992, when the former President Bush (also looking for that "Kennedy moment," it seems) announced a mission to Mars.

The WP offleads, and the NYT mentions on Page One, the murder of a federal prosecutor in Maryland. Jonathan Luna, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Baltimore, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a creek in rural Pennsylvania—about 100 miles from his office—just hours after he had been scheduled to appear in court to prosecute a violent drug ring. While authorities say they have no firm leads, they are questioning the defendants in that case.

The LAT catches early-morning word of an explosion onboard a commuter train in Chechnya that killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more. Authorities described the bombing as an act of terrorism and said it may have been carried out by a female suicide bomber.

The WP stuffs word of a report from a former Israeli military official that claims Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated Saddam Hussein's weapons programs before the war in Iraq. Israeli intelligence services and political leaders provided "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated," the report says. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has declined to comment on the report, which cited no specific details of what intelligence was exchanged.