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NOT ALL OF THE inflation in this country is coming in from the Persian Gulf, and not all of it is imposed by OPEC. After the recent attention to the increases in oil prices, and their contribution to the probability of a recession, itÛªs useful to take a look at the prices of another basic commodity, steel. OPEC has held oil prices steady this year but, as you doubtless saw, intends to raise them 14.5 percent in the coming year. By an instructive coincidence, 14.5 percent is just about the average increase in steel prices over the past year, and there is more to come in January.</br></br>This disproportionately fast run-up in steel prices is the resultÛÓunintentional, but realÛÓof the Carter administrationÛªs attempts to protect the U.S. steel industry from its foreign competitors. The American producers had been complaining that the foreign mills were selling steel here below cost, to avoid unemployment at home. That's called dumping, and itÛªs illegal. Just about a year ago, the Treasury Department announced its trigger price system. It calculated the real cost of making steel in the most efficient millsÛÓJapanÛªsÛÓand any steel imported below that price was to trigger ail immediate dumping investigation. It was an ingenious idea. Unfortunately, it did not foresee the drastic rise in the value of the Japanese yen throughout 1978.</br></br>As the yen soared, it took the trigger prices up \v ith it. Knowing that their foreign competitors would not come into this country below the trigger price, the American companies raised their own prices right along with the triggers. The trigger system became, in a manner of speaking, price controls in reverse. Instead of a ceiling holding prices down, for the American producers it provided a floor under pricesÛÓand, as in an elevator, the floor was rising. The whole trigger experiment has become another painful example of the truth that protectionism is highly inflationary.</br></br>reaction to the closing of steel mills in OhioÛªs Mahoning Valley, around Youngstown. The closings were blamed on the imports, and the first reports indicated vast unemployment and unbearable hardship for whole communities. But time has passed, and it has become obvious that the social impact of the closings was greatly overestimated. The current unemployment rate there is less than one percentage point higher than the national average. While the inflationary costs of the trigger prices have swollen far beyond any expectation, the social distress caused by the shutdowns of those obsolescent mills in Ohio turns out to have been, happily, much more shortlived than anyone could have hoped a year ago.</br></br>What comes next? On Jan. 1, OPEC imposes a 5 percent increase. ItÛªs the first of four increments scheduled for 1979. On the same day, the Treasury has announced, the steel trigger prices will go up another 7 percent under the automatic formula. The industry has already indicated that it will follow with price increases in the range of 3.5 percent. While the causes of these rises in oil and steel prices are different, the effects will be remarkably similar.