Administration's Big "China Friday" Was Probably the Best We Can Realistically Hope For, but It's Still Not Great

Last Friday, the Obama administration had a rather busy day handling China trade issues.  First, USTR announced that it was initiating, at the United Steelworker's request under "Section 301" of US trade law, an investigation of Chinese subsidies and other trade measures related to "green" energy production:

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced today that the United States has initiated an investigation under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act with respect to acts, policies and practices of the Government of China affecting trade and investment in green technologies. The investigation has been initiated in response to a petition filed by the United Steelworkers (USW) on September 9, 2010.

The petition alleges that China employs a wide range of World Trade Organization (WTO)-inconsistent policies that protect and unfairly support its domestic producers of wind and solar energy products, advanced batteries and energy-efficient vehicles, among other products, as China seeks to become the dominant global supplier of these products. According to the petition, these policies include export restraints, prohibited subsidies, discrimination against foreign companies and imported goods, technology transfer requirements, and domestic subsidies causing serious prejudice to U.S. interests. The petition further alleges that China’s policies have caused the annual U.S. trade deficit in green-technology goods with China to increase substantially since China joined the WTO, making China the top contributor to the U.S. global trade deficit in the sector....

The investigation will consider whether acts, policies, and practices of the Chinese government deny U.S. rights or benefits under the GATT 1994, under the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement (SCM Agreement), and under China’s Protocol of Accession to the WTO.

Under the Section 301 statute, the U.S. Trade Representative may request consultations with the foreign country concerned at the time an investigation is initiated. The statute also provides, however, that the U.S. Trade Representative, after consulting with the petitioner, may delay for up to 90 days any request for consultations for the purpose of verifying or improving the petition.

In light of the number and diversity of the acts, policies, and practices covered by the petition, and after consulting with the petitioner, the U.S. Trade Representative has decided to delay for up to 90 days the request for consultations with the Government of China for the purpose of verifying and improving the petition. During this period, the U.S. Trade Representative will seek information and advice from the petitioner and advisory committees. The U.S. Trade Representative will take account of this information and advice, as well as public comments submitted in response to a Federal Register notice, in improving and verifying the petition.

Because the issues covered in the China-Green Technology investigation involve U.S. rights under the WTO Agreement, any consultation request will be made under the WTO Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU), and unless consultations result in a mutually acceptable resolution, the U.S. Trade Representative will request the establishment of a WTO panel under the DSU.

Only a few hours later, the Treasury Department announced (as predicted!) that it was delaying its Semi-Annual Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies, in which it can deem countries to be "currency manipulators" under Sections 3004 and 3005 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988:

Since June 19, 2010, when China announced it would renew the reform of its exchange rate and allow the exchange rate to move higher in response to market forces, the Chinese currency has appreciated by roughly 3 percent against the U.S. dollar. Since September 2, 2010, the pace of appreciation has accelerated to a rate of more than 1 percent per month. If sustained over time, this would help correct what the IMF has concluded is a significantly undervalued currency.

By continuing to implement reforms to strengthen domestic demand and by allowing the exchange rate to move higher to reflect fundamental economic forces, China will make a significant positive contribution to the global rebalancing effort, help reduce pressure on those emerging market economies that have more flexible exchange rates, and provide a more level playing field for trading partners around the world.

The challenge of building a stronger, more balanced and sustainable global economic recovery is a multilateral challenge, not just the responsibility of China and the United States. It requires policy reforms in all major economies.

The Heads of State, finance ministers, and central bank governors of the G-20 and the Asia-Pacific region will participate in several important meetings over the coming weeks. These meetings provide an opportunity to make additional progress on the important challenge of securing stronger and more balanced growth.

The Treasury will delay the publication of the report on international economic and exchange rate policies in order to take advantage of the opportunity provided by these important meetings.

No one in the White House would confirm that these two major China-trade announcements were related, but, c'mon, let's get real: the White House has been in quite the pickle on China trade and currency, and this is its grand Solomonic compromise.  On the one hand, they had labor unions and congressional Democrats rabidly campaigning against China trade - especially Chinese currency policies - in advance of what's shaping up to be a mid-term election bloodbath.  On the other hand, they understand fully that (a) aggressive unilateral action against China would probably violate WTO rules and could provoke serious Chinese retaliation against  US exporters; (b) calling China a "currency manipulator" less than a month before the G-20 summit would almost certainly salt the next multilateral opportunity to address global currency reform (the White House's preferred course of action); and (c) a very good argument can be made that China doesn't actually meet the legal standard for a "currency manipulator" under US law.  And compounding this stress were statutorily-mandated deadlines for the Section 301 investigation and the currency report that fell only weeks before the mid-term elections.  Thus, as I said in a few media interviews on Friday: "Given that United States Trade Representative’s Section 301 decision wasn’t due until October 24, it is either tied to Treasury’s currency announcement or one extremely large and convenient coincidence."

And in all honesty, I must admit that, given this administration's routine prioritization of trade politics over trade policy, Friday's tandem announcements are about the best that we could've hoped for.  Let's face it: considering the aforementioned political dynamics and the fact that the Commerce Department recently rejected two petitions to investigate Chinese currency practices under the US countervailing duty (anti-subsidy) law, there was absolutely no chance - NONE - that the White House was going to issue the semi-annual Treasury report and not label China a "currency manipulator" a little more than two weeks before the mid-terms.  And by delaying the report, Treasury has allowed the G-20 negotiations to remain viable.  As I said on Friday: "The Treasury report’s delay is a good sign for those discussions. A bunch of name calling right before you get together for an adult conversation is not the best strategy to use when conducting international negotiations that could affect hundreds of billions of dollars in global trade." Harumpf!

Second, initiating the Section 301 investigation is relatively harmless.  As the USTR announcement makes clear, the agency will now hold 90 days worth of meetings with the USW and other interested parties in order to "improve and verify" the union's petition.  Then USTR will simply initiate bilateral consultations with China through the WTO - the preferred multilateral channel for global trade dispute resolution.  As I said when the USW petition first dropped: "Section 301 is not like Section 421 (the tires case) or antidumping and countervailing duty investigations (the other cases mentioned), which can result in the unilateral imposition of remedial US tariffs on Chinese products. Instead, the very best outcome here is (i) the mutual resolution of the matter through bilateral consultations or (ii) a WTO case adjudicated by an independent panel of arbiters (unlike the, ahem, sympathetic US Department of Commerce or USTR)."  And, really, the USW's petition probably has some merit.  Indeed, with hundreds of billions in Chinese government subsidies to its "green" manufacturers over the years, how couldn't it?

Third, even if the USW's case some day results in WTO-sanctioned retaliatory tariffs on Chinese "green" products (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.), at least it would be on only one class of products, whereas a broadbased assault on China's currency could literally end up affecting Chinese imports of everything.  (And China's retaliation would, of course, reflect that big difference.)

Finally, the administration's compromise was pretty successful politically.  As this McClatchy article demonstrates, the dual announcements caused congressional protectionists like US Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to focus on the "good" Section 301 news and mute their criticism of the "bad" news on the currency report.  (For example: "Top Democrats publicly ignored the Treasury decision, focusing instead on the administration's decision to accept a United Steelworkers complaint that China is unfairly subsidizing its "green technology" sector. The office of the U.S. trade representative will investigate the complaint.")

So all-in-all, the administration's move was a pretty agile political tap-dance that minimized anti-trade backlash.  Not too shabby, really, and probably the best we free traders could expect.

That said, Friday's Section 301 announcement wasn't completely free from problems.  First, it's not exactly clear how USTR will navigate the difficulties that the Section 301 law itself raises under WTO rules.  The EU challenged Section 301 at the WTO and, while the adjudicating panel found that USTR could apply the law consistently with WTO disciplines on the resolution of trade disputes, it also stated very plainly that its ruling was dependent on USTR sticking closely to those disciplines.  In particular, the panel found that the timelines established under US law for the imposition of unilateral trade measures under Section 301 could conflict with WTO timeframes for the resolution of a panel dispute, but USTR had discretion to ensure that those WTO timeframes weren't violated.  But can you imagine the ruckus that Sherrod Brown and his congressional cronies - many of whom routinely complain about the WTO - would cause if the "official" Section 301 deadline arrives, and a WTO Panel still hasn't ruled?  That should make for some, umm, interesting tension between Congress and USTR, don't you think?

Second, even though USTR's announcement is pretty benign, Chinese retaliation still might be on the way.  Indeed, preliminary news reports from today indicate that China may (and I stress the word "may") have restricted exports of "rare earth minerals" - necessary for all sorts of high tech manufacturing - to the United States as part of its angry response to USTR's decision.  (The "rare earths" dispute has been brewing for a while, so I'm not convinced that today's news is really related to the Section 301 decision.)

Third, the new 301 dispute could open a whole can of worms regarding international trade conflicts over "green" policies and protectionism.  A big, contentious US-China dispute on "green subsidies" raises much, much larger retaliation concerns than those raised by China's actions today.  As I noted last month, the USW's petition freely admits that the United States has doled out at least a $100 billion of its own cash on US green manufacturers, and I've been nervously reporting for over a year now on the growing number of trade disputes surrounding green subsidies and other forms of protectionism.  If USTR's case goes forward, and then China files its own case against US subsidies, that could affect hundreds of billions of dollars in global trade.  And other cases by other WTO Members could easily follow (global trade disputes are very prone to copycat cases) - further accelerating the tit-for-tat trade tensions surrounding trade in environmental goods.

In sum, while the White House's big "China Friday" was about as good as can be expected from this administration, it wasn't great.  So strap in, folks, we've still got a long way to go on this one.

Is Obama's KORUS Deadline Good News for US Trade Policy?

As most everyone reading this blog already knows, President Obama announced over the weekend a November 2010 deadline for (re)negotiations on the US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) before he submits the deal to Congress for a final vote:

US President Barack Obama launched a new initiative Saturday to wrap up a free trade deal with South Korea delayed for three years due to market access problems over American beef and autos.

Obama ordered his officials to complete talks by November, when he visits Seoul for the next G20 summit, so that he can push the deal through Congress and implement it soon after.

"I want to make sure that everything is lined up properly by the time I visit Korea in November, and in the few months that follow that, I intend to present it to Congress," Obama said after talks with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak....

Obama has asked US Trade Representative Ron Kirk to start discussions with his Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-hoon, "to resolve the outstanding issues in a way that levels the playing field for US producers," a senior administration official said.

During the past year, Kirk said his office conducted extensive discussions with "stakeholders" and congressional leaders to gain a detailed understanding of their concerns about the agreement.

"Now, at President Obama's direction, we look forward to finalizing ways to address these concerns, level the playing field for US workers and producers in the key sectors of autos and beef, and deliver to Americans the jobs and economic opportunity this agreement can bring," Kirk said in a statement.

"I expect to speak to Minister Kim today to express our intention to get to work as quickly as possible."

When news of the announcement hit Sunday morning, the ensuing response was pretty predictable.  Pro-trade CEOs, business groups and members of Congress were strongly supportive.  Anti-trade unions, and their congressional lapdogsallies, angrily vowed to oppose the FTA.  And the general consensus among the wonks - like AEI's Claude Barfield and Phil Levy - was that the announcement was praiseworthy because the establishment of a firm deadline here was a decent (and unprecedented) sign that the Obama administration was - after almost a year-and-a-half in the embarrassing wilderness - going to get serious about US trade policy.  And if the President can confront his Party and emerge victorious, it could mean great things for the broader policy future.  Quoth Levy:

The looming KORUS battle raises a number of questions about the administration's political strategy. Is this a decision to override the concerns of skeptical House Democrats, thereby paving the way for Colombia, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and more? Or will the administration try to split the difference, as with Chinese tires, and pass only the one agreement while leaving the others hanging?

The answers will say a great deal about the prospects for trade policy in the remainder of the president's term. If the administration sees this through, it may mark a welcome return to U.S. trade leadership. If political obstacles prove too much, it will be very hard to conceal the failure in light of this weekend's specific and public commitment.

I must admit that I've been struggling with the President's announcement since I first heard of it on Sunday.  On the one hand, the pro-trade folks have it right: it's nice to hear our all-too-squirmy President finally pin himself down on an FTA and set a real deadline for action.  And anti-traders' public angst is always music to my ears.

On the other hand, there are several reasons for serious concern here, and it appears that, in the aggregate, the bad news here could very well outweigh the good.

First, as Barfield notes in his blogpost, the fact that the final call on moving KORUS forward came from the National Security Council instead of USTR shows that (i) this decision apparently had very little to do with free trade and almost everything to do with foreign policy, namely containing that nuke-craving psychopath on Korea's Northern border; and (ii) it took a nothing less than a nuke-craving psycho to finally force the President's political team to relent and let an overwhelmingly beneficial agreement with a key strategic ally that was signed three years ago finally move forward.  So what does that mean for the Doha Round or other trade agreements with less strategic partners?  Does USTR (or free trade's undeniable economic benefits) have any say in the matter, or will US trade policy be guided only by politics and foreign policy for the next 2.5 years?  If it's the latter, we're looking at a very, very limited US trade agenda through 2012 and an unlikely resolution of bilateral irritants like Mexican trucking or Cotton subsidies or Buy American.  And that's a shame.

Second, concern #1 above raises big doubts about the future of the completed US-Colombia and US-Panama FTAs, despite the fact that those agreements also deserve passage for both economic and foreign policy reasons.  But hey, who knows, maybe if Hugo Chavez tries to get nukes then the Colombia agreement will move.  Dare to dream!

Third, even with that raging, nuke-craving psycho in North Korea, the President didn't promise to actually advance KORUS in the near future.  He only promised a deadline for bilateral discussions, and not only is this deadline a really cowardly punt of the issue until after the November elections, but it also could be, contrary to the sunny optimism cited above, where things get really bad for KORUS and US trade policy more generally.  Remember, this agreement was completed and signed in 2007, and USTR Ron Kirk's team has been meeting with "stakeholders" for the last 18 months.  Yet the FTA's still not ready for primetime (i.e., Congress) and, even worse, the President has just made clear that it won't be ready until USTR and its Korean counterpart re-negotiate a few more details, namely Korean market access for US automobile and beef exports.  So all we have is a deadline to complete negotiations over a fully-negotiated-and-completed trade agreement.  Hmm.  Now, it appears that the President's commitment to these new talks is real, as he forced Deputy USTR Demetrios Marantis to cancel his plans to go to Angola for TIFA negotiations in order to begin staff work on KORUS.  But as Heritage's Anthony Kim explains in today's WSJ Asia, the Koreans aren't going to take this "re-negotiation" lightly:

From Seoul's point of view, the pact is signed and sealed. Mr. Lee has already stood up to trade unions and opposition parties to get his parliament to pass the deal. Especially after taking a beating in local elections earlier this month, he cannot afford to be seen making further concessions to the U.S.

Even if South Korea does come to the table, it's unclear whether the U.S. side can stand up to America's own trade unions, who likely want more concessions on U.S. access to Korea's beef and automobile markets. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said over the weekend that he would work "to ensure that our proposals adequately address outstanding concerns." Never mind that Congress has already demanded the Koreans renegotiate the deal's terms—twice.

A third attempt to push for concessions would further tarnish America's fading international credibility and leadership in free trade.

Kim's opinions are on very solid ground - the Koreans have repeatedly said over the last two years that yet another re-negotiation of the FTA is off-the-table.  And why on earth would they?  First of all, KORUS' automobile and "non-tariff barrier" provisions are the strongest of any US FTA ever, and yet the US automobile industry - in which this administration still has a political, emotional and financial stake - has promised to oppose the agreement unless it contains "meaningful market access" provisions (read: guaranteed market share).  That's "managed trade," not "free trade," and it has no place in a "free trade agreement."  Second, US trade stagnation over the last two years has given the Koreans a serious upper hand in any future negotiations because they've been signing trade deals - including a massive one with the EU - at a breakneck pace over that period.

So even if the President's commitment to advancing KORUS is, while admittedly less-than-courageous, genuine (and I have no reason to doubt that it is), there's still a very real chance that the Koreans stand firm, and that these new bilateral talks thus fail to produce anything new by this November.  Maybe an innocuous side agreement or two, but re-opening the text of the FTA seems like a real longshot.  And if that turns out to be the case, then the American automakers and their congressional allies (like Ways & Means chairman Sandy Levin (D-MI)) will almost certainly continue to oppose KORUS, and Obama's big November deadline could become a very big problem, rather than some great solution.  Don't think that's possible?  Well, just ask yourself the following questions:

If nothing changes between now and November, will the President - who thus far has caved to every anti-trader out there, no matter how small -  really stand up to US automakers and labor unions, as well as a very a large swath of his Democrat allies in Congress, and advance the agreement next year as he promised in Toronto last weekend?  Or will he cave to the political pressure and use the missed deadline as an excuse to bag KORUS altogether (something like "well, we tried, but we just can't agree on an agreement that truly provides a 'level playing field,' so we're abandoning our efforts")?

If Obama takes the former route, then his KORUS announcement could, as Levy states, open the door to real movement on US trade policy in 2011.  If he chooses the latter, then KORUS will die, and so will any hope for US trade policy in the next two years.

Now, are you really willing to bet that he'll choose door number one?  Because I sure as heck ain't.

The False Altruism of Trade Deals' Labor Protections

Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya have an excellent op-ed in today's Times of India on the disingenuousness of US and EU labor unions' vocal demands that free trade agreements contain enforceable labor standards.  The crux of the piece is here:

When the unions in the US and the EU insist on a set of labour standards in the developing countries with which they compete for markets at home and abroad, they take an altruistic line: we are doing this out of solidarity; we are doing it for your workers. But when you push them hard, they always say: it is "unfair" to have to compete with others who do not have our standards. Now, the latter is an argument about competition; it is about losing out in trade. So it is an argument motivated by self-interest, not altruism.

The traditional demand by the American unions has been that others should have the same standards as the US does. But this argument is comic, were it not tragic. Is the US a paragon of virtue on labour standards? After all, less than 10 per cent of its private workforce is now unionised. And this is because the main weapon that unions have, the right to strike, has been crippled by the Taft-Hartley legislation of over 50 years ago. Even liberal universities have refused to let their administrative employees organise. In consequence, Human Rights Watch, which has investigated the right to unionise, a central feature of the ILO principles, has found that this is far from being guaranteed in the US.

So, US unions have shifted to asking for ILO "core standards" instead. But this will not wash either. The US has not even ratified many of these core conventions. So, in effect, this version is also to be aimed at others, not themselves.

The truth of the matter is that, frightened by competition from our exports, the American and European unions seek relief. This can be obtained by conventional import protectionism. But, if this is constrained by WTO obligations, then it can be obtained by raising the cost of production of the foreign rivals. Raising their labour obligations is one way of doing this. Therefore, we have called it a form of "export protectionism", like the Voluntary Export Restraints, where the exporting country restrains its exports.

As good as the authors' explanation is, none of it is novel: developed country labor unions have been shrouding their vicious protectionism in false altruism for decades.  What is novel, however, is this disconcerting bit of news that has been relatively unreported here in the United States (emphasis mine):

Lagging employment recovery and continuing high levels of unemployment have marked the macroeconomic scenario in the United States. So, it is natural that the United States, which chaired the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, would use its privileged position as the host to invite the US secretary of labour, a well-known union activist, to convene a meeting of the employment and labour ministers on the jobs situation prior to the next G-20 heads of state meeting in Canada.

The macroeconomic aspects of the labour situation are indeed a proper focus of such a meeting. But the Pittsburgh declaration goes further and urges the G-20 countries not to "disregard or weaken internationally recognised labour standards" and to "implement policies consistent with ILO fundamental principles and rights at work".

Led by their federation, the AFL-CIO, the US labour unions have had a long history of pushing for a "social clause" into trade treaties at every forum. For international economists familiar with this history and the stranglehold the unions exercise on the Democratic Party and Congress today, the G-20 declaration constitutes a carefully designed trap. It is drafted in a way in which the US and the European Union can get developing-country employment and labour ministers unfamiliar with the agenda and influence of developed-country unions, to endorse measures that have a "feel good" fagade but are, in fact, a protectionist dagger aimed at our jugulars. Indeed, the US undersecretary of labour, Sandra Polanski, who has been put in charge of the meeting, is well known to us as a long-standing proponent of such measures and a relentless activist on their behalf.

In other words, the White House has put a labor union champion (Ms. Polanski) - one who has long advocated "feel good protectionism" in trade agreements - in charge of an under-the-radar meeting of the G-20 countries' labor ministers prior to the June 26-27, 2010 G-20 Summit in Toronto.  (Polanski bio here.)

What could possibly go wrong?

Has The American Anti-Globalization Movement Jumped the Shark?

Last week's G20 meetings featured anti-globalization protest shenanigans that have become routine since the genre began in Seattle 10 years ago - anarchists, arrests, misguided vandalism against Starbucks and other alleged symbols of corporate global-greed, English majors unintentionally demonstrating why they're English (and not Economics) majors, etc etc.  But lost in the routine media coverage of the anti-trade protests in Pittsburgh was their striking impotence relative to earlier iterations of the "movement."

According to the AFP, Pittsburgh police estimated that up to 4,500 "protesters on Friday flooded into city streets lined with police in full riot gear, still tense after violent anti-G20 protests in the eastern US city late Thursday." Those violent Thursday protests featured only about 400 hooligans and a few dozen arrests, the AFP also reported.

Sounds pretty big, huh? Well, it's actually pretty insignificant when you provide some perspective (instead of just focusing on the protesters' attention-grabbing violence and tomfoolery):

• The granddaddy of the modern anti-globalization movement - the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Meeting in Seattle - drew over 40,000 protesters, according to similar local police estimates.  Those protests - featuring the strange bedfellows of US labor unions, anarchists, environmental "advocates," socialists, and "consumer groups" like Public Citizen - really flooded Seattle's streets and literally shut down both the city of Seattle and the WTO meetings themselves.

• The follow-up to Seattle - the April 2000 protests against the annual World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, DC - featured at least 10,000 protesters, summoned about 1,500 additional cops, and shut down most of DC (although the official meetings still managed to happen).  I was working in DC at the time and vividly remember how most people stayed home that day in fear of violence (or just really, really bad traffic).
  

Compared to these protests, the G20 ruckus was pretty tepid.  Granted, the devolution of the American anti-globalization movement is not a brand new phenomenon: compared to last April's World Bank/IMF protests - which apparently drew only 150 protesters - the G20 protests were huge.  Nevertheless, the G20 meetings were highly publicized, came in the midst of a global recession that's (unfairly) being blamed on "free market policies," and were located in a traditional "rust belt" city with large numbers of folks that are highly skeptical of free trade (Pittsburgh is the national headquarters of the United Steelworkers union, afterall).  And the March 2009 G20 protests in London drew "tens of thousands" of protesters. 

Yet the G20 meetings attracted a little more than ten percent of the numbers in Seattle.  What gives?  Has the anti-capitalist movement been replaced by cooler protest movements on the nation's liberal arts campuses?  Or have the USW and its anti-trade bedfellows grown complacent in the face of declining US foreign trade activity and a recent victory against Chinese tire imports gifted to them by President Obama?

Well, maybe.  Although I have another theory that's at least equally plausible: the vast majority of America's young people (and a lot of other Americans) just don't fear globalization anymore.

Since 1990, the share of US GDP represented by trade - imports and exports - has exploded from a little over 15 percent to almost 30 percent before the onslaught of the current recession.  And the share of foreign-owned companies on US soil also has expanded dramatically in recent years.  This trend means that today's young Americans - those most likely to be enamoured with protest "movements" (and have the parentally-funded free time to participate in them!) - grew up and now live in a much more globalized America than did their flannel-wearing, Pearl-Jam-loving counterparts of the late 1990s.  And because more "potential protesters" own an iPod assembled in China (but designed in California), or have a parent who works for a foreign-owned company, or drive a Toyota Camry made in the US (or a Ford Focus made in Mexico), they're just not buying the anti-globalization hype.

So they, and a lot of similarly-affected older Americans, politely delete the mass-organizing email from Socialistworker.com, and the only ones left at the anti-globalization protests are the anarchists, the diehard unionists, the career protesters, the plain ol' nutjobs, and the professional protectionists.  Such a "coalition," while kinda entertaining, does not an official protest movement make, and thus the relatively small numbers on the streets of Pittsburgh.

Either that, or there was a wicked kegger/Dave Matthews concert/global warming protest that day.