Those advocating capitualtion on trade and manufacturing are hard at work. From the National Journal’s Congress Daily today, Trade Restraint?
Those who follow U.S.-Chinese trade frictions must be working overtime these days. The number of high-profile trade complaints between the two countries — from anti-dumping investigations and the imposition of tariffs, to legal arbitration — is at an elevated threat level and growing rapidly. It may be time to ask whether enough is enough.
Is there such a thing as “enough” enforcement of trade laws?
The complaint here is that just enforcing trade agreements creates “friction” and other countries might “retaliate.” But we learned the hard way under the conservative policies of the previous administration that if you do not enfore these agreements you lose jobs, lose manufacturing capacity, and it undermines the public support necessary to pass future trade agreements that could help the country. The Bush-era lack of enforcement helped cost us millions of jobs, severely damaged our manufacturing capacity and turned much of the public against the idea of trading with others. Oh, and don’t forget the part about how we ended up owing China hundreds of billions of dollars because we stopped making things here, and borrowed money from them to buy things made there by companies that used to be here but moved their factories.
And proving the point, President Obama’s enforcement has already started reopening factories and bringing jobs back.
The BIG error in the piece is where it claims that American workers don’t want trade laws enforced so that they can keep their jobs. From the piece,
Critics also blame the Obama administration, whose imposition of tariffs on low-end Chinese-made tires in September was widely interpreted as a political sop to organized labor — and a green light to other U.S. industries that the current government would be far more sympathetic to such cases than President George W. Bush’s administration was.
The tire case was filed by the United Steelworkers union, which isn’t directly involved in manufacturing tires in this country. The workers who do make tires here didn’t want the tariffs. Trade experts said China’s tire exporters weren’t violating any trade laws. Indeed, America doesn’t even make low-end tires.
Actually the Steelworkers Union does represent tire workers, so the piece is just wrong on this. Of course the workers who do make tires want to keep their jobs. And the International Trade Commission found that this was a case for enforcement of the agreement and that tariffs were warranted. The background here (for those of you who don’t closely follow every word written here) is that after China was admitted into the WTO, so many tires were being imported from China that it was disrupting American companies and jobs. China had specifically agreed that tariffs should be imposed if this happens, the ITC ruled it was happening, and President Obama imposed the required tariffs.
Another problem with the piece is that it quotes Douglas A. Irwin, “a Dartmouth College trade expert” without explaining to readers that Irwin is an advisor to Cato Center’s Center for Trade Policy Studies. In my post Who Opposes American Manufacturing? II I wrote about this outfit,
They are saying we should allow other countries to cheat and like it, that free trade as a one-way street where we only buy and they only sell is just fine, and basically that we should just give up our manufacturing capacity and let other countries have it without a fight. Just let them take it from us – and by the way anything else is “protectionism” and “politicization of trade.” …
WHY would Cato Institute advocate this? Is it just weird libertarian cult ideology? Perhaps a look at who is paying for this advocacy will provide a clue. While mostly funded by individuals, Cato’s funders include many of the usual right-wing funding suspects: Koch, Scaife, tobacco companies, Exxon and other oil companies, Wall Street… But one sponsor jumped out at me: the Korea International Trade Association. (Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Volkswagon are sponsors as well.) Dots connected: Cato is receiving funding from the Korea International Trade Association, and then turning around and advocating that American hand over its manufacturing capacity to other countries!
So I checked, and did not find that Cato Institute registered as a “Registered Foreign Agent.” Why not?
So take this one with a big grain of salt.
