Author Archive
Are Democrats Serious about Immigration Reform?
President Obama is meeting today with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to talk about reforming our broken immigration system. The challenge for both parties will be whether they can overcome opposition within their respective bases to expanding legal immigration.
For Republicans, the chief opposition remains the faction of talk-radio-driven conservatives who just don’t like immigration, period, especially when it comes from Latin America. For Democrats, who now run Washington, the chief opposition to allowing more foreign workers to enter the country legally is represented by organized labor.
As the Wall Street Journal reports this morning, advocates of immigration reform “worry that Democrats will defer to the AFL-CIO on the issue of legal immigration. The labor confederation has opposed a robust guest-worker program or higher levels of legal immigration, fearing they would depress wages. A larger labor presence would splinter the coalition of business and pro-immigration groups that embraced past immigration efforts, only to see them falter in the Senate.”
As I’ve argued consistently in the past, immigration reform is not worth pursuing if it does not include expanding future flows of legal immigrants, both highly skilled and lower-skilled workers. If Congress confines itself to legalizing the 8 million or so workers already here illegally, with a vow to get tougher on enforcement, then we are just repeating the mistake of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.
We will know if President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are serious about fixing the problem of illegal immigration if they face down their labor-union allies and embrace a workable, market-oriented expansion of legal immigration. Otherwise, we are in for more futility, frustration and failure.
Good News! Recession Cuts Trade Deficit in Half!
The latest U.S. trade numbers were released this morning, and the news reports so far have predictably focused on the fact that the U.S. trade deficit in March expanded modestly compared to February.
The real story behind the numbers, however, is that U.S. imports and exports continue to decline. Compared to the month before, U.S. exports of goods fell another $3.0 billion, while imports fell by $1.6 billion.
If we go back a full year, the drop in trade is staggering. Between March of 2008 and March of 2009, U.S. exports of goods and services fell by 17 percent, and imports fell an even steeper 27 percent. As a result, the goods and services deficit is less than half of what it was a year ago.
Critics of trade such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs are always harping that if we could only reduce our dependence on imports, and along with it the trade deficit, Americans would enjoy higher wages and more plentiful jobs.
Well, we’ve managed in the past year to reduce imports by more than a quarter and cut the trade deficit by more than half. Are we feeling any better?
Obama ‘Offshore’ Tax Plan Will Cost U.S. Companies Business and Jobs
The Obama administration is ready to follow through on campaign promises to crack down on U.S. companies that “ship jobs overseas.” The administration announced this weekend that it would seek to raise taxes on the so-called active earnings of U.S.-owned affiliates abroad. According to a front-page story in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:
Under current law, U.S. companies can defer taxes indefinitely on the many of the profits they say they have earned overseas until they “repatriate” that money back to the U.S. The administration seeks to sharply limit the tax deductions that companies taking advantage of deferral can take.
Of course, there is a perfectly good reason why we don’t tax what U.S. companies earn and keep abroad: those companies are already paying taxes in the countries where their affiliates are located, and at the same rates that apply to multinationals from other countries competing in the same markets.
As I pointed out in a Cato Free Trade Bulletin in January, locating affiliates in foreign markets is now the chief way that U.S. companies reach new customers outside the United States. If we sock them with the relatively high U.S. corporate rate, U.S. companies will be less able to compete against German and Japanese multinationals in the same markets who need only pay the (almost always) lower corporate rate assessed by the host country. And as I noted in January, any jobs created at affiliates abroad tend to promote more employment at the parent company back in the United States.
This demagogic grab for more revenue will only cripple the ability of U.S. companies to expand their sales in global markets, putting in jeopardy the U.S.-based jobs that support their foreign affiliates.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade
The Global Economy Is Not Immune to Swine Flu
World governments should be careful not to play politics with the Mexican swine flu outbreak. The health consequences should of course be rigorously addressed—but without adding economic consequences, which is what several countries appear poised to do.
Public health scares have a history of seeping into trade policy without anything resembling sufficient consideration of the evidence. Governments in Russia and East Asia are already banning pork exports from Mexico, even though there is zero evidence that they pose a health hazard. It hearkens back to unfounded bans of U.S. beef in recent years by the European Union and South Korea.
If the U.S. government jumps on board, U.S. exports could be targeted for retaliatory trade actions. One quarter of U.S. pork production is exported, as well as billions of dollars of our soybeans used as feed by foreign hog farmers.
Exploiting this crisis could turn what is so far a manageable health problem into an unnecessary trade and diplomatic conflict. Obviously the global economy does not need the extra strain.
Law Waves U.S. Flag at Pirates
Yesterday the U.S. House passed by voice vote a resolution praising the captain and crew of the U.S.-flagged ship Maersk Alabama that was seized by Somali pirates earlier this month. It was a riveting story that ended well for the brave crew and their Captain Richard Phillips, thanks to the work of Navy Seal sharpshooters. But one question that has yet to be adequately discussed is just what that ship was doing over in such dangerous waters off the coast of strife-torn Somalia.
The answer may surprise you: the U.S. government sent them there.
The ship and its American crew of 20 were delivering U.S.-government food aid to Africa. Under the Food Security Act of 1985, food aid sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Agency for International Development must in most cases be delivered by U.S.-owned, flagged and crewed ships. The law is one of several, including the Jones Act, that are designed to steer business to generally high-cost U.S. shipping companies.
The laws in that narrow sense have worked: While 95 percent of international cargo arriving in the United States each year is carried by lower-cost, non-U.S.-flagged ships, 83 percent of U.S.-sponsored food-aid cargo is carried by U.S.-flagged ships. [You can read a WTO critique of U.S. cargo shipping preference programs beginning on page 121 of its 2008 review of U.S. trade policy.]
Such laws are anti-competitive and cost U.S. companies and taxpayers millions of dollars a year in higher shipping costs. But the case of the Maersk Alabama reveals another unintended cost. Almost by definition, food aid goes to regions troubled by war, civil strife and oppressive governments. The Food Security Act essentially requires American civilians to be inserted into dangerous places, which creates yet another inviting target for pirates and another argument for a U.S. military presence.
The U.S. government could ship its official cargo at lower costs, and keep civilian American citizens out of harm’s way, by repealing all its protectionist, anti-competitive cargo preference laws.
Not-so-COOL Rules Stoke Xenophobia
Come Monday you can thank the federal government for making food more expensive by requiring retailers to provide useless information.
On March 16, federal regulations will finally kick in that require perishable food at the grocery store to sport “country of origin labeling,” known as COOL. The rules were originally passed by Congress as part of the 2002 farm bill, but are only being implemented now because of understandable resistance from retailers.
The COOL regulations will require that all perishable food products be labeled at retail to indicate the country of origin. The regulations cover beef, pork, lamb, goat, chicken; wild and farm-raised fish and shellfish; fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables; peanuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, and ginseng.
In a recent statement announcing final implementation, Obama administration agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said, “I strongly support Country of Origin Labeling — it’s a critical step toward providing consumers with additional information about the origin of their food.”
This is nothing but a form of regulatory harassment designed to play to anti-foreign prejudices. COOL provides zero health or safety information; foreign meat and produce must conform to exactly the same health and safety standards that apply to domestic-made goods.
Let’s Be Fiscally Responsible, Starting Tomorrow
In his famous book, Confessions, the 5th-century theologian Augustine wrote that he used to pray before his conversion, “Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet.”
That quote came to mind as I read the news a moment ago that President Obama plans to sign the $410 billion catch-all appropriations bill even though it contains 8,500 “earmarks” that will cost taxpayers nearly $8 billion.
Recall that as a candidate, Obama said he and Democratic leaders in Congress would change the “business as usual” practice of stuffing spending bills with pet projects. Those earmarks, submitted by individual members to fund obscure projects in their own districts and states, typically become law without any debate or transparency.
Saying he would sign the “imperfect bill,” President Obama offered guidelines to curb earmarks … in the future. “The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past,” he said. “So let there be no doubt: this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability.”
Lord, make us fiscally responsible, but not just yet.
House Bans ‘Driving While Mexican’
Buried in the $410 billion catch-all appropriations bill now before the U.S. Senate is a provision that would end a program that has allowed Mexican truck drivers to deliver goods to destinations inside the United States.
A provision in the original North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 was supposed to allow U.S. and Mexican trucking companies to deliver goods in each other’s country. But opposition from the Teamsters union and old-fashioned prejudice against Mexicans has derailed implementation of the provision.
Under current restrictions, goods coming into the United States from Mexico by truck must be unloaded inside the “commercial zone” within 20 miles or so of either side of the border and transferred to U.S.-owned trucks for final delivery. U.S. goods going to Mexico face the same inefficient and unnecessary restrictions.
The Bush administration established a pilot program that allows certain Mexican trucking companies that meet U.S. safety and other standards to deliver goods directly to U.S. destinations, while the Mexican government has agreed to allow reciprocal access to its market. But the Democratic Congress and the new Democratic president have vowed to finally kill the program, and the provision inside the appropriations bill will probably deliver the final blow.
As I argued in an article in 2007, the Mexican trucks that have been allowed to operate in the United States under the pilot program have actually had a better safety record than U.S. trucks.
As I noted in the article, and it still applies today: “The real objection they have to Mexican trucks making deliveries to U.S. cities is not that they are unsafe, but that those trucks are driven by Mexicans. In the eyes of congressional leaders, ‘driving while Mexican’ remains an unacceptable public hazard.”
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Trade
A Government That “Works,” but for Whom?
In his inaugural address yesterday, President Obama tried to step around the central question of whether the federal government has grown too big and powerful:
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
Even in skirting the question, President Obama has in effect come down on the side of bigger government. His statement assumes that government programs will be central to creating jobs and providing health care and retirement security. For every problem confronting American families, it is just a question of finding the right program that “works.” He leaves off the table the very real possibility that government intervention has made each of those problems more difficult for Americans to solve, and that the answer really is a smaller role for government.
The other open question is who decides if a government program “works.” President Obama has wrapped himself in the mantle of change, yet as a candidate he endorsed the 2008 farm bill. The existing U.S. policy of production subsidies and import tariffs, a policy that has remained essentially unchanged for 75 years, arguably “works” for a small number of relatively well-off sugar, dairy, corn, rice, and cotton farmers. But for the vast majority of Americans, the farm bill delivers higher and more volatile prices at the store, billions of dollars a year in additional government spending, higher cost for U.S. businesses, a degraded environment, and a harder slog out of poverty for millions of farmers in less developed countries. [You can go here to find Cato research on how farm programs have failed to work in our national interest.]
If Senator and candidate Obama could not see the need to end our failed farm policies, it is hard to imagine many if any other programs that will come to an end under his administration.
For more on how scrapping farm subsidies would be a good first step toward removing failed government programs, watch this video:
Gridlock Puts Brakes on Big 3 Bailout (for Now)
The Associated Press is reporting today that “Stalemate dims prospects for $25B auto bailout.”
Here’s the lead:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Prospects dimmed Monday for enactment of a $25 billion bailout for the faltering auto industry before year’s end, as congressional Democrats and the Bush administration seemed headed for a stalemate. Help for Detroit’s Big Three, which have been battered by the economic meltdown that has choked their sales and frozen their credit, is falling victim to a partisan fight over where the money should come from. Senate Democrats said they would press ahead with their plan to carve out a portion of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout to pay for the loans, but aides in both parties and lobbyists tracking the plan acknowledged they did not currently have the votes to do so. The White House and congressional Republicans insist that the automaker bailout money instead come from redirecting a separate $25 billion loan program approved by Congress to help the industry develop more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The story is already making me nostalgic for partisan gridlock and divided government, which will officially end on January 20, 2009.
My trade center teammate Dan Ikenson has been ably making the case in recent days that the bailout is a bad idea. What appears to be saving our country from wasting this huge amount of money is the much-bemoaned gridlock.
A key word in the story is “currently.” The plan does not “currently” have the votes to pass, but all that will change in 64 days.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; General; Government and Politics; Trade
Bipartisan Nonsense on “Energy Independence” and Trade
Sen. John McCain reinforced his bipartisan credentials Thursday evening by sounding as confused as the Democrats on the nation’s assumed need for “energy independence.”
In his acceptance speech at the GOP convention in St. Paul, McCain pledged federal support for alternative energy so the United States can reduce the amount of energy it imports from abroad. “When I’m president,” McCain told cheering delegates, “we’re going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much. We will attack the problem on every front.”
He then pledged his support for more offshore drilling, nuclear power plants, wind, tide, solar and natural gas.
Whoa! Before we embark on a project that could cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, let’s get the facts straight. Specifically, where did that $700 billion number come from?
That is far more than what we pay for imported energy. In 2007, Americans spent less than half that amount—$319 billion—for imported energy of all kinds, including oil and natural gas. Even with higher energy prices in 2008, our total bill for imported energy this year will be nowhere near $700 billion.
Contrary to popular perception, most of our oil imports come such friendly countries as Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom, or from more neutral suppliers such as Iraq, Kuwait, Nigeria, Angola, Chad and Congo (Brazzaville). Only a third of our imported oil comes from the major problem countries of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, Ecuador and Russia. We don’t import any oil directly from Iran. [You can check out the latest Commerce Department figures here.]
Filed under: Energy and Environment; General; Government and Politics; International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade
New Income and Poverty Figures Spoil the Pity Party
The Census Bureau’s release this morning of the latest income, poverty and health insurance numbers did not follow the script of those who want to paint a picture of a nation in crisis.
Opponents of free trade, immigration, and limited government constantly tell us that the middle class is shrinking, the poor are getting poorer and more numerous, and the number of Americans without health insurance is climbing inexorably. Their solution is always to restrict trade and immigration and launch expensive new programs to alleviate the obvious misery.
Spoiling the pity party is this morning’s widely anticipated report, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007.” Among its major findings:
- The number and percentage of Americans without health insurance actually declined slightly in 2007 compared to 2006. The share without insurance in 2007, 15.3 percent, is actually lower than it was a decade ago.
- Median household income is not falling: “Between 2006 and 2007, real median household income rose 1.3 percent, from $49,568 to $50,233—a level not statistically different from the 1999 prerecession income peak.”
- The share of households earning a middle-class income of between $35,000 and $100,000 in real 2007 dollars has indeed shrunk slightly compared to a decade ago, but so too has the share earning less than $35,000 a year, while the share earning more than $100,000 continues to rise. The middle class is not shrinking; it is moving up.
- The 12.5 percent of Americans living below the poverty line in 2007 was statistically unchanged from 2006, and remains below the 13.3 poverty rate in 1997. The poverty rate has been trending downward since the early 1990s during a time of growing trade and immigration flows.
- The Gini coefficient, a statistical measure of income inequality, was .463 in 2007, down slightly from earlier in the decade and virtually the same as it was a decade ago.
We can argue all day about what policies should be adopted to spur growth and higher incomes for the broadest swath of Americans. We certainly have plenty of ideas here at Cato. But it flies in the face of reality to argue that the major indicators of economic well being in America are trending downward in some sort of crisis that demands sweeping government intervention.
Filed under: General; Immigration and Labor Markets; International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade
Joe Biden’s So-So Record on Trade
During his long tenure in the Senate, Joe Biden of Delaware has compiled a mixed record on votes affecting our freedom to participate in the global economy. The record of the Democratic vice-presidential hopeful is more pro-trade than Barack Obama’s but much less so than John McCain’s.
According to our “Trade Vote Records” feature on the Cato trade center web site, Biden has voted in favor of lower trade barriers on 24 out of 48 votes in the past 15 years. On trade-distorting subsidies, such as farm price supports, he has voted for lower subsidies on only 3 of 11 votes. Since Obama joined the Senate in 2005, he has voted for lower barriers 36 percent of the time and for lower subsidies 0 percent. John McCain has voted for lower barriers on 88 percent of votes and for lower subsidies on 80 percent.
Here are the highlights and lowlights of Biden’s voting record on trade:
On the positive side from a free trade perspective, he voted consistently to maintain normal trade relations with China, including permanent NTR in 2000; for the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico in 1993; for the Uruguay Round Agreements Act in 1994; for the Freedom to Farm Act in 1996; for fast-track trade promotion authority in 1998; to defund enforcement of the travel ban to Cuba; to cut sugar production subsidies; and in favor of the Morocco and Australian free trade agreements in 2004.
On the negative side for those who support the freedom to trade, Biden voted for steel import quotas in 1999; for the 2002 and 2008 protective and subsidy laden farm bills; against trade promotion authority in 2002; against the Chile, Singapore, Oman, and Dominican Republic-Central American FTAs; in favor of the Byrd amendment directing anti-dumping booty to complaining companies; in favor of imposing steep tariffs on imports from China to force changes in that country’s currency regime; and in favor of screening of 100 percent income shipping containers by 2012.
For a senator who prides himself on his foreign policy experience, Biden’s record shows great ambivalence about American participation in the global economy.
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade
Our Convoluted, Less-than-open Immigration System
If you think the United States has an “open border” policy toward immigrants, check out this immigration flowchart put together by our friends over at the Reason Foundation.
In one graphic sweep, it explains better than mere words why we need comprehensive immigration reform.
Of course, if you are one of those people who like to read the articles and not just look at the pictures, you can check out Cato research on immigration at the Center for Trade Policy Studies web site.
Filed under: General; Immigration and Labor Markets; International Economics and Development; Trade
The Democrats and Free Trade
If and when trade and globalization come up at the Democratic National Convention next week, I can almost guarantee that the take will be negative. It has become part of the party’s core message these days that free trade favors the rich at home and our unfair trading partners abroad. Just yesterday, in a tour of southern Virginia, Democratic hope Barak Obama took an indirect swipe at trade when he told a crowd in Martinsville, “You’re worried about the future. Here people have gone through very tough times. When you’ve got entire industries that have shipped overseas, when you’ve got thousands of jobs being lost. . . . That’s tough.”
Not all Democrats share the pessimistic view of trade. In the latest edition of the Cato Journal, hot off the presses, I review a new book by pro-trade Democrat Ed Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute. In my review of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy, I wrote:
Although it is easy to forget today as Democratic candidates rail against NAFTA and globalization, but for decades it was the Democratic Party that championed lower tariffs. Democrats opposed the high tariff wall maintained by Republicans from the Civil War to World War One, arguing that tariffs benefited big business at the expense of poor consumers. Under President Woodrow Wilson, Congress drastically lowered tariffs in 1913 and replaced the revenue with an income tax, only to see Republicans raise tariffs again in the 1920s, culminating in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 and the Great Depression that followed.
The Democrats should think long and hard before they give up that legacy altogether.
You can read the full review here.
Filed under: General; Government and Politics; International Economics and Development; Trade
A Modest Proposal to Protect Newspaper Jobs
Gannett announced this week that it will eliminate more than 1,000 positions among its 85 daily newspapers and 900 non-dailies. The reason for the layoffs has become all too familiar — declining readership and advertising sales, primarily because of lower-cost competition from the Internet.
I’m waiting for a member of Congress to issue the following news release:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15—Rep. John Smith today announced his opposition to the loss of jobs at Gannett and other newspaper companies and demanded that Congress and the president rethink their commitment to “so-called free domestic trade.”
“The loss of thousands of decent, good-paying middle-class union jobs will be devastating to my district and to communities across America,” Rep. Smith announced. “Our misguided domestic trade policies have exposed vital industries to unfair competition. Our newspapers, record shops, and book stores must not be forced to compete against dumped services sold at predatory prices.”
Rep. Smith blamed growing use of the Internet since 1994 for stagnant real wages, a shrinking middle class, falling home prices, and rising levels of crime, alcoholism, and divorce in America’s newsrooms.
Rep. Smith rejected what he called “academic theories about competition, comparative advantage, technological progress, and productivity gains.” He also denounced supposed evidence that the Internet has brought benefits to millions of workers and consumers as “mere statistics.”
As Rep. Smith told cheering constituents at a recent debate, “Look, people don’t want cheaper news and information if they’re losing a job in the process. They would rather have the job and pay a little bit more for their news. And I think that’s something that all Americans could agree to.”
Rep. Smith demanded that the president and Congress embrace an immediate “time out” on all new technologies and web sites until domestic trade policies “can be made to work for all Americans.” He demanded more vigorous enforcement of domestic antidumping rules and an additional $1 billion in the FY2008 budget to expand Technology Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Trade
The Answer to High Oil Prices and Global Warming? More Global Poverty, Less Immigration
Opponents of immigration are now trying to hitch their wagon to worries about high oil prices and global warming.
An ad on page A12 of today’s Washington Post asks, “If foreign oil has us over a barrel now, what happens when our population increases by another 100 million?” The text of the ad tries to provide the answer: “With America’s population at a record 300 million today, [oil] supplies are again tight in spite of record high prices. And the U.S. Census Bureau projects that another 110 million people will be added to our population between 2000 and 2040.” So, if we want lower oil prices, we need to reduce America’s population growth and that means reducing immigration. Get it?
The ad is sponsored by five anti-immigration, anti-population-growth groups, including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and Californians for Population Stabilization.
The ad provides no evidence that rising global demand for oil has been driven primarily or even significantly by population growth in the United States. In fact, our total oil consumption has actually declined compared to last year, while demand continues to rise in developing countries. The two previous big spikes in global oil prices, in 1973 and 1979, occurred when the U.S. population was 80 to 90 million LOWER than it is today.
The future direction of oil prices will be determined by such factors as energy efficiency, economic growth in emerging economies, oil production, and development of alternative energy sources. Immigration rates to the United States won’t matter.
As though on cue, the Center for Immigration Studies released a report this morning with the headline, “Immigration to U.S. Increases Global Greenhouse-Gas Emissions.” The report argues that immigration “significantly increases world-wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the United States, which is a higher-polluting country.”
What the CIS study is really arguing is that rich people pollute more than poor people, so the world would be better off if more people remained poor. The same argument could be used to oppose economic development in places such as China and India that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the past two decades.
Through the dark lens of CIS, the world is a better place when poor people remain stuck in poor countries, and poor countries remain poor.
Filed under: Energy and Environment; General; Immigration and Labor Markets; International Economics and Development; Tax and Budget Policy; Trade
Sound Advice from Bill Clinton’s Trade Rep
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing last week, a top trade official from the Clinton administration voiced her dissent from the trade-skeptic orthodoxy that now seems to dominate the Democratic Party.
Charlene Barshefsky was one of several former U.S. Trade Representatives who testified at the July 29 hearing. She served as Bill Clinton’s USTR from 1997 to 2001. In contrast to presidential hopeful Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress, she told the panel that Congress should pass pending free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama.
According to BNA’s weekly International Trade Reporter newsletter [sorry, subscription required], she told the panel that blocking the U.S.-Colombia agreement would do nothing to improve labor rights in Colombia. In fact, refusing to enact the agreement would be the “dream” of Colombia’s anti-American neighbor Hugo Chavez, the heavy-handed president of Venezuela. Those are among the main points my Cato colleague Juan Carlo Hidalgo and I made in our Free Trade Bulletin on the agreement earlier this year.
Former USTR Barshefsky pronounced the U.S. tariff code as outdated in our era of globalization. We continue to apply high tariffs to such light-manufacturing products as clothing, shoes and household linens at the expense of low-income families. “They protect few if any jobs, but do noticeable damage to hopes of poverty reduction in the United States,” Barshefsky reminded the senators.
Her fellow Democrat Earl Blumenauer, the congressman from Oregon, made the same point a few days earlier at a Cato policy forum on why Congress should unilaterally lower tariffs on shoe imports. You can watch a video of the forum here.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Trade
EPI Gets Trade and Jobs Story Wrong Again
According to a report released today by the Economic Policy Institute, trade with China has caused a loss of 2.3 million American jobs since the Asian giant joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The study will get a lot of coverage, but its numbers and methodology are shockingly flawed.
This is a well-traveled road for EPI and the report’s main author Robert Scott. Scott has authored other reports that have come to the same conclusion about NAFTA and earlier periods of trade with China. The methodology virtually guarantees a finding of job losses: It assumes that imports displace a certain number of workers while exports create new jobs, and since we run trade deficits with China and Mexico—surprise!—trade with those countries leads to net job losses.
I’ve dissected the flaws of EPI’s approach elsewhere, but to just summarize what everyone should keep in mind when you read about the EPI report:
EPI exaggerates the number of American companies and workers who compete directly against Chinese imports. Many of our main imports from China—shoes, clothing, toys, and consumer electronics—were being imported from other countries before China’s emergence as a major supplier. In fact, as imports from China have risen since 2001 as a share of total imports, imports from other Asian countries have been in relative decline. So imports from China do not typically displace U.S. production but instead displace imports from other countries. In fact, in the past year, the U.S. unemployment rate has been heading up as our overall trade deficit has been heading down.
EPI ignores the creation of jobs elsewhere in the economy that are made possible by trade and globalization. Exports aren’t the only channel through which trade and globalization creates jobs. Foreign capital flowing into the United States—the flip side of the trade deficit—creates jobs through direct investment in U.S. companies and indirectly by lowering interest rates, which stimulates more domestic investment.
Even when trade does displace workers, in a flexible and growing economy, new jobs will be created elsewhere. As I reported in my October 2007 study “Trading Up,” job losses in manufacturing during the past decade have been more than offset by net job gains in better-paying services sectors.
Since China joined the WTO in 2001, U.S. exports to China have shot up by 22 percent per year, the U.S. economy has added a net 6 million new jobs, real compensation per hour earned by U.S. workers—that is, wages plus benefits adjusted for inflation—is up 9 percent, and manufacturing output is up 10 percent. Last year, America’s supposedly beleaguered manufacturers earned collective profits of $305 billion, more than five times what they earned the year China joined the WTO.
As we struggle through a domestic slowdown and rising prices for consumers, we could use more trade with China, not less.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Trade
Tony Snow’s Sunny Conservatism
Whether you agreed with him or not, former presidential press secretary Tony Snow was a class act. During his time as President Bush’s chief spokesman, from April 2006 to September 2007, Snow sparred with gusto with the White House press corps but always remained cheerful and collegial. News stories about his death over the weekend report that he was unfailingly upbeat even in the final months of his battle with cancer.
I only met Tony Snow once, and that was in June 2007 at a White House briefing on immigration reform. Also speaking at the briefing were two cabinet secretaries, but we all knew who was the star attraction that day. Snow did not bring a particular expertise to the briefing, but he did express a passion for the president’s commitment to expanding opportunities for legal immigration.
In conversation after the meeting, Snow told a small group of us that it was the president’s views on immigration more than anything else that convinced him that he wanted to be part of the administration.
None of this is a big revelation if you read Tony Snow’s pre-White House writings on the subject, but it is worth remembering that this conservatives’ conservative, sometime Bush critic, and former editorial page editor of the Washington Times embraced a pro-immigration view that was at odds with much of the rest of the movement and most Republican members of Congress. One more reason to mourn his passing.
Filed under: General; International Economics and Development; Trade
McDonald’s CEO on Globalization and Eating Your Vegetables
In an age when most corporate CEOs shun controversy, it was refreshing to read a recent interview with McDonald’s Corp. CEO Jim Skinner.
In the August 2008 issue of the Wall Street Journal magazine Smart Money [sorry, the interview has yet to be posted online], Skinner was asked what responsibility his fast-food company has for combating the national “obesity epidemic.” Skinner replied: “We are not going to solve society’s problems. People have to do that on their own …[I]f you can’t get your kids to eat vegetables, why is it my job?”
Exactly. Why should parental responsibility be treated as such a radical idea?
Skinner does note that the restaurant chain has expanded its menu to meet demand for healthier foods beyond burgers and fries. For example, McDonald’s now buys 39 million pounds of apples a year, more than any other buyer in the country.
In the same interview, Skinner credited globalization as one of the reasons the company’s stock has roughly doubled in the past three years while the economy and the rest of the stock market have struggled.
You look at the proliferation of restaurants outside the U.S. since the last big recession, in 1990 to 1991. It’s an enormous offset. Half our sales come from abroad. And we are as well positioned today as at any other time in our opportunity to serve customers and not nick their pocketbook.
Which is just the point I made a few months ago in a Cato Free Trade Bulletin on how globalization and free trade have helped U.S. companies and the economy to better weather domestic downturns.
Free Trade Promotes Peace in Colombia
Democratic leaders in the House refuse to allow a vote on the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, claiming the government there has not done enough to stem violence against union members. But a story in this morning’s Washington Post helps to expose the hollowness of their objections.
As Juan Carlos Hidalgo and I documented in our study earlier this year, under President Alvaro Uribe, violence in Colombia has dropped dramatically. The general homicide rate has dropped by 40 percent since president Uribe took office in 2002, and killings of trade unionists have dropped by more than 80 percent.
No place symbolizes the transformation of Colombia more than Medellin. A decade ago, the city was a symbol of the violence and chaos spawned by illegal drug trafficking and a 40-year-old civil war with the Marxist guerrilla group known as the FARC.
Today Medellin is a thriving city. Thanks to President Uribe’s crackdown on crime and the FARC, the murder rate in the Medellin metro area has dropped from 174 per 100,000 in 2001 to 26 last year. Progress has also been aided by economic growth fueled by globalization. Colombians are exporting records amounts of textiles, apparel, flowers and other goods to the United States, which creates some of the better paying jobs in that country. As the Post story, summarizes:
Exports surged in the 1990s as the United States granted temporary trade preferences to Colombia, allowing many of its products to enter the world’s largest market duty-free. They really took off after 2002, when Washington expanded that agreement to include Colombia’s all-important textile sector. Humming assembly lines making Ralph Lauren socks and Levi’s jeans sprang up across this picturesque Andean valley, creating tens of thousands of jobs and turning Medellin into a model of the curative power of liberalized trade.
Democratic leaders who oppose the U.S.-Colombia FTA are not only ignoring the real progress that has been made against violence in that country. They are also blocking the very trade expansion that has so visibly helped to make that progress possible.
Filed under: International Economics and Development; Trade
What Would Jesus Do as Zimbabwe’s Central Bank Chief?
Zimbabwe is a country descending into chaos through more ways than just its economy and political system. It seems that the very moral order is being turned upside down.
In an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, the head of Zimbabwe’s central bank, Gideon Gono, said that Jesus would approve of his stewardship of the nation’s currency.
Because of the disastrous policies of President Robert Mugabe, the traditional sources of government revenue have dried up, so the government has directed the central bank to print money to pay its soldiers, officials and other supporters of the regime. Mr. Gono has meekly complied, driving the inflation rate into the stratosphere. Under Gono’s watch, inflation in Zimbabwe has soared to an estimated annual rate of eight million percent.
To justify his mismanagement Gono cites the Bible and Christianity:
Anyone who says the bank governor should violate the head of state is violating a principle that Jesus Christ demanded of his disciples. A key element Christ looked for in his disciples was loyalty.
That begs the question: Loyalty to whom?
In reading his Bible, Mr. Gono must have missed the bit about “Thou shall not steal,” which is exactly what hyperinflation does. It massively expropriates wealth from private citizens and gives it to the government. When Peter and his fellow apostles were told by the government authorities of their day to stop preaching about Jesus (Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 5), they replied, “We must obey God rather than men.”
By propping up the Mugabe regime through hyperinflation, Mr. Gono has made a very different choice.
Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; General; Trade
Rescue Us from the Che Guevara Myth
The rescue of 15 hostages from the clutches of Colombia’s Marxist rebels yesterday is a riveting story with major repercussions for the region, as my colleague Juan Carlos Hidalgo blogged earlier. But one minor detail of the drama should not go by without comment.
The Colombian Army rescuers involved in the ruse were wearing Che Guevara T-shirts as they landed in the guerrilla camp to claim the hostages. Guevara, of course, is the late Argentine communist revolutionary and sidekick to Fidel Castro. Che T-shirts are apparently popular in FARC rebel camps, as they are on U.S. college campuses.
In a letter to the Wall Street Journal that was coincidently published on the day of the hostage rescue, Peruvian writer Alvaro Vargas Llosa tells the real story of Che Guevara. Far from being a hero, he presided over mass executions, prison labor camps, bloody and failed insurrections, and economic ruin.
Yesterday’s rescue was a welcome blow to everything Che Guevara stood for.
On Onions, Oil, and ‘Speculators’
Politicians who blame “speculators” in futures markets for the run up in oil prices — such as Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) writing in this morning’s USAToday — should consider a lesson from the lowly onion.
Onions are one of the few commodities in the United States for which there are no futures markets, according to an item published Friday in Fortune magazine. (Futures markets allow the sale of commodities for set prices at future dates.) It seems that in the late 1950s domestic onion producers blamed those same speculators in futures markets for driving onion prices DOWN. They successfully lobbied Congress to ban all futures trading in onions, a ban that is still in place a half century later.
So has the absence of futures-market speculation kept onion prices low and stable? Quite the contrary. According to Fortune:
And yet even with no traders to blame, the volatility in onion prices makes the swings in oil and corn look tame, reinforcing academics’ belief that futures trading diminishes extreme price swings. Since 2006, oil prices have risen 100%, and corn is up 300%. But onion prices soared 400% between October 2006 and April 2007, when weather reduced crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only to crash 96% by March 2008 on overproduction and then rebound 300% by this past April.
Sen. Dorgan and his allies will need to find someone else to blame for volitale and rising oil prices.
Filed under: Energy and Environment; General; International Economics and Development; Trade
Will Sanctions Save Zimbabwe?
Events of the past few weeks have made it clear that President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is a dictator and a bully who presides over a sham democracy epitomized by today’s mock “election.” But does that sad fact require or even justify imposing sanctions against that already tortured southern African country?
European Union leaders are already talking tough about withdrawing their ambassadors. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council plans to discuss new sanctions against Zimbabwe as early as next week.
I share the dismay with Mugabe’s thuggery and mismanagement of the economy, but count me skeptical that trade sanctions, oil embargoes and other economic reprisals would achieve anything positive.
If 165,000 percent inflation, widespread hunger, and mass shortages and unemployment have not undermined Mugabe’s government, Western sanctions are probably not going to make a crucial difference. Zimbabwe’s president and his sycophants will continue to enjoy their palatial homes, catered meals and chauffeured limos. Sanctions would only deepen the suffering of their unfortunate subjects. As our research at Cato has shown, economic sanctions almost never work.
Another complication is that Mugabe’s government is not unique. According to Freedom House, Zimbabwe’s suppression of civil and political liberties is no worse than 15 other countries, including China, Belarus, and Saudi Arabia. A total of 44 other countries share with Zimbabwe the label of “Not Free.” Should the West aim sanctions at all of those countries, too, or is Zimbabwe to be singled out because, by a fluke, the opposition actually came close to winning a rigged election?
The ongoing tragedy in Zimbabwe will probably not end until that country’s closest neighbors, including South Africa, intervene aggressively, or Mugabe himself departs this world to meet his maker.
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