I'm not sure whether we can call Daoism utilitarian. Daoists, to me, seem to me to be negating the conception of utility - or at least, utility for society in general.

Good point. I should have made it more clear that mean is only the political side of taoism. It's very well aligned with utilitarianism because it references to the consequences of actions.

This is well exemplified in the story of the tree and the carpenter.

You probably mean this story? http://www.zoomdout.com/home/chuang-tzu-the-dream-of-the-carpenter-and-the-oak-tree

For me it actually represents pretty well the dangers of naive utilitarianism. You can't just look at the immediate and easily seen benefits – there are always consequences that won't be seen. There are trade-offs that are not evident until later. World is complicated place.

For politics this means that non-action is very often the best action – if you don't do anything, at least you are not making an effort to change the situation to worse.

While googling the story, I also happened to find this blog post which had some interesting points: http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2008/02/is-the-tao-te-c.html