VIDEO: Six Former USTRs Speak Frankly About US Trade Policy

CSIS held a cool event last week with six former US Trade Representatives speaking about US trade policy.  The whole video is posted below, and I highly recommend a full viewing for anyone who's interested in better understanding US trade policy (especially you foreigners out there who don't obsess over it like I do):

If you don't think you have time to view the whole video, AEI's Claude Barfield provides a nice summary on his organization's blog of some of the USTRs' more interesting points.  The title of the post - "Why the Doha Round is dead and much more" - gives a bit of the game away, but here's the more-robust accounting:

First, there was almost unanimous agreement that the Doha Round is dead and the US and other major trading nations should move on. Coming from fervent supporters of the WTO, this judgment is an important message for the trade community, and mirrors the judgment of the US business community. Only Carla Hills, the most dedicated multilateralist, expressed misgivings about jettisoning Doha negotiations.

Of more immediate interest, the group had much to say—partly in response to high interest from the audience—on the only serious negotiations now on the table: the nine-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. The Obama administration wants to conclude these negotiations this year, but the USTRs all doubted this was possible. The question that has arisen then is what to do about the desire of Canada, Mexico, and Japan to join the negotiations. At a trilateral summit this past week, both Canadian PM Harper and Mexican President Calderon pressed Obama hard on this decision—with inconclusive results.

Interestingly, the USTRs almost unanimously supported the quick inclusion of both nations into the negotiations (on Japan there was more skepticism that the political situation in Japan itself would allow entrance this year). The group took this position for two reasons: one, to their credit, the trade leaders view the TPP not only as an economic agreement but also as part of a larger US diplomatic push to retain leadership in the Asia-Pacific. From this, they are convinced that only with the heft that will come from additional large economies (Canada, Mexico, Korea, and later, Japan) will the TPP emerge as a real vehicle for a trans-Pacific economic architecture. The administration will have to bite the bullet and respond over the next few months. It is hard to know what weight the USTRs collective judgment will have—but if the president does respond affirmatively he will clearly have this group at his back.

One final partisan note: at the end of the session came a political question: to wit, why had trade policy virtually stopped when the Obama administration came into office. Barshevsky gave a general answer pointing to the economic crisis in 2009. Fair enough, but what was missing here and often in these sessions is a clear statement of political reality: on trade issues, a Democratic president for at least two decades has faced a deeply divided party. In general, a majority of House Democrats oppose new trade liberalizing agreements. A Republican president, on the other hand, in general has a united party on trade, backed strongly by the business community.

This makes a huge difference on White House calculations—not least when elections loom every two and four years.

Barfield then added one more interesting point over email:

[N]ot a single USTR supported the president’s reorganization plan — or at least folding USTR into Commerce or a new department.

Ouch.  I'm happy to note that the esteemed USTRs' consensus views closely mirror my own, less-esteemed opinions.  (I promise that I will try not to tear a rotator cuff patting myself on the back.)  

That critically-important point aside, I hope that the few summary points above will convince you to take the time to watch the video and learn a good bit about the current - and frustrating! - state of US trade policy.

Enjoy.

Lazy? Really, Dude?

At this weekend's APEC summit, President Obama explained to the audience why, in his humble (stop laughing) opinion, American international trade and investment efforts have lagged over the last few years:



For those of you too lazy to watch the full clip, the money quote from President Obama's answer on why US exports and investment have struggled is the following:

We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.

No, seriously.  That's what he said.

Now, I could start some typical Lincicomian (fake word) diatribe pointing out the little fact that the Obama administration had a unique opportunity in January to assert US leadership on global trade and finish the struggling, ten-year old (and now basically dead) Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, the conclusion of which would have produced immense market access benefits for US exporters and investors.

Or I could point out that, during Obama's time in office, almost every country on the planet - including our biggest competitors in the EU, Canada and China - has pursued and implemented free trade agreements at a breakneck pace, while the White House's only unique bilateral or regional trade contribution was last weekend's announcement of the "broad outlines" of a Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement that was (a) actually started by the Bush administration and (b) originally supposed to be finished last week, rather than just, ahem, "outlined."

Or I could point out that Obama administration protectionism - in the form of "Buy American" provisions or the just-resolved ban on Mexican trucks or US tariffs on Chinese tires and chicken or trade remedies duties on key raw materials and other industrial inputs - has cost US exporters billions of dollars in lost export opportunities or increased production costs.

No, instead, I think that nothing hits home the ridiculousness and temerity of the President's accusations of American "laziness" in the international arena better than his almost-three-year delay of completed US trade deals with Panama, Colombia and Korea - deals that Obama himself sold to the American public as great export, investment and jobs vehicles, yet sat moldering in an Oval Office desk due to the President's political cowardice.  As I said in July when President Obama falsely accused Congress of preventing those deals from being completed "right now":

Actually, Mr. President, that could have been done in 2008, had then-Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) not rewritten the longstanding congressional-executive agreement on Trade Promotion Authority (and "fast track" before that) when President Bush tried to implement the US-Colombia FTA. 

And that could have been done in 2009, had you not shelved the FTAs in order to placate your party's protectionist wing. 

And that could have been done in 2010, had you not demanded that each one be renegotiated in order to further stall the agreements and to pay off powerful domestic constituencies. 

And that could have been done earlier this year, had you simply submitted the renegotiated FTAs' implementing legislation to a Republican-controlled House of Representatives that was literally begging for you to do so. 

And that even could have been done last week, had you not attached a "poison pill" to the US-Korea FTA in the form of an expensive and highly controversial Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) expansion that congressional Republicans had already voted down in February and had repeatedly warned would be deal-killer. 

And, despite all of this, Mr. President, you and Congress could still implement these FTAs right now if you would just submit clean FTA implementing legislation to the House and Senate pursuant to [Trade Promotion Authority].

Instead, it took three more months to finally push these slam-dunk trade deals through Congress, and they still won't enter into force for several more months.  Until they do, American exporters and investors remain at a disadvantage in key global markets vis a vis some of their stiffest foreign competition.

So, after explaining just how lazy we've been on global trade and investment, I'm sure the President wrapped up the APEC summit and got right back to work ensuring the rapid implementation of the Colombia, Panama and Korea FTAs, the completion of the TPP Agreement and the resuscitation of the Doha Round, right?

Yeah, umm, well:

President Barack Obama is playing golf this afternoon at the Mamala Bay golf course at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

And yet we're the lazy ones.