Is Missing American Trade Leadership Beginning to Bear Protectionist Fruit? (Hint: Kinda Looks Like It)

Over the past few years, I and several other US trade-watchers have lamented the United States' dwindling leadership on global trade and economic issues and warned of that trend's troubling potential ramifications.  It appears that at least one of our breathless predictions may finally be coming true.  Starting in mid-2009 - when it became depressingly clear that the Obama administration viewed trade in mostly political terms and thus would not be advancing a robust, proactive free trade agenda - we free traders expressed grave concern that US recalcitrance could harm not only US companies and workers, but also the entire global free trade system.  As I explained in a 2009 oped urging the President to adopt a robust pro-trade agenda (as outlined in this contemporary Cato Institute paper):

Since the 1940s, the US has led the charge to remove international barriers to goods, services and investment. The result: a global trade explosion that has enriched American families, spurred innovation, enhanced our security and helped millions escape poverty. Every US president since Herbert Hoover has championed free trade because of its proven benefits....

Because of today's rules-based multilateral trading system and the interdependence of global markets, US fecklessness on trade shouldn't lead to devastating protectionism akin to the Smoot-Hawley-induced tariff wars of the 1930s. But it's still a problem. In 2008, global trade contracted for the first time since 1982, and protectionist pressures abound. The WTO's Doha Round is comatose, even though an ambitious deal could inject US$2 trillion into the reeling global economy. Considering the US has steered every major trade initiative in modern history, any chance for significant progress on trade will disappear without strong American leadership - in word and deed.

Since that time, the President has clearly not taken free traders' advice.  The WTO's Doha Round is dead, despite a pretty good opportunity to force the issue back in late 2010.  The Obama administration took three years to implement already-dusty FTAs with Korea, Panama and Colombia and actually insisted on watering the deals down with new protectionist provisions in order to finally agree to move them.  And while countries around the world are signing new trade agreements left and right, we've signed exactly zero and have eschewed important new participants and demanded absurd domestic protectionism in the one agreement that we are negotiating (the TPP).  Meanwhile, on the home front the President has publicly championed mercantilism, as his minions quietly pursued myriad efforts to restrict import competition and consumer freedom, embraced competitive devaluation and maintained WTO-illegal policies (while publicly denouncing protectionism, of course).

Pretty stark when you lay it all out like that, huh?

Despite this depressing state of affairs, it did not appear that the United States' diversion from its long free trade legacy had resulted in a tangible increase in global protectionism (although the death of Doha certainly isn't a good thing).  Unfortunately, a new blog post from the FT's Alan Beattie indicates that those chickens may finally be coming home to roost:

One of the very few bright spots in governments’ generally grim recent performance of managing the world economy has been that trade protectionism, rampant during the Great Depression, has been relatively absent.

That may no longer be the case. The WTO, fairly sanguine about the use of trade barriers over the past few years, warns today that things are getting worrying. The EU made a similar point yesterday. And this monitoring service has been pointing out for a long time that a lot of the new forms of protectionism aren’t counted under the traditional categories, thanks to gaping holes in international trade law.

After glancing at the bi-partisan protectionism on display in the 2012 US presidential campaign, Beattie concludes that, on the global trade stage, "things are looking scarier than they have for a while."  I'm certainly inclined to agree, and one need only look South to Brazil's frighteningly rapid transition from once-burgeoning free trade star to economically-stagnant, unabashed protectionist to see a scary example of why.

And while I agree with Beattie that the world still isn't likely to descend into a 1930s-style trade war - we can thank the WTO and the proliferation of free market economics for that - the rising specter of global protectionism is undoubtedly distressing.

And, of course, it has risen just as America's free trade leadership has faded away.

Now, as we all know, correlation does not necessarily mean causation, and it's frankly impossible to know just how much the dearth of US trade leadership has actually affected global trade policies.  But I think it's pretty safe to say that it certainly hasn't helped matters.  Just ask yourself this: how can the US admonish Brazil or any other country about its distressing mercantilism when the President is himself routinely preaching - and his administration is busy implementing - similar policies?  How can we decry the global "currency wars" when we're discretely advocating a similar strategy?  How can we push back against nations' increasing use of market-distorting subsidies or regulatory protectionism when we're....

I think you get the idea.

As I've frequently noted here, it was a Democrat - Secretary of State Cordell Hull - who over 70 years ago began a global free trade movement that until very recently had been led - in word and deed - by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.  And while the distressing recent spike in global protectionism may not have been caused by a lack of American trade leadership, it is very, very likely not going to recede until the United States regains its long-held place at the front of the trade liberalization pack.

[Final note: it looks like former USTR and current World Bank chief Robert Zoellick agrees.]