Keep trade on the back burner, please

The groups Ambassador Kirk chose to single out in the Working Group letter, however, were hardly representative. “We are conducting follow- up meetings with [groups who submitted comments],” Kirk wrote, “including the AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers, the Sierra Club, Oxfam, and Global Trade Watch, among others, to ensure we are hearing the full range of views on these issues. That some of the most anti-trade and anti-market groups in Washington are considered a “full range of views” is not a good sign.

The other recent trade move—President Obama’s announcement on the strategy for doubling exports—was equally lackluster.

First, the target is ambitious-bordering-on-unrealistic. The United States has not seen its exports double for many decades. Meeting that target would require a 15 percent rate of export growth every year for five years, double the rate of growth of the five years before the 2008 recession.

Second, the strategies for achieving the export growth were more of the same bureaucratic micromanagement from Washington. The ideas floated include an “Export Promotion Cabinet” and a “Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee,” who would come up with a “coordinated, detailed plan.” Color me skeptical.

In the same speech, President Obama showed his true protectionist colors by implying that many job losses in the United States were as a result of our trade partners cheating. Enforcement of trade agreements—another prong of the administration’s export strategy—is a treacherous road in any case: The U.S. itself has a blemished record on complying with trade rulings.

Exporters missing out on billions of dollars worth of sales to Brazil (in retaliation for the U.S. failure to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling on cotton subsidies) and Mexico (those trucks again) would be forgiven for doubting the administration’s concern about exports, at least as far as it conflicts with the wishes of politically powerful special interests.

If this is the best the Obama administration can do, maybe having trade on the back burner isn’t so bad after all.

Sallie James is a policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies and the author of the new study Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Worth the Fuss?