Archive for the ‘Trade and Immigration’ Category
Protectionism in a Can of Tuna
In an op-ed posted yesterday on Forbes, I praised a decision by the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body for recognizing the true nature of federal regulations that define what kind of tuna can be called dolphin-safe. In one part of the ocean where the Mexican fishing fleet operates the rules are very strict, but everywhere else, including the parts of the ocean where the U.S. fishing fleet operates, tuna can be called dolphin safe without regard to whether dolphins were actually killed in the fishing process.
Rather than providing consumers with accurate information, as the government and other advocates contend, the consequence of the dolphin-safe labeling requirement is to provide discriminatory protection for the U.S. tuna industry by misleading those consumers.
The case highlights the reality that government is not a reliable guardian of consumer welfare, and that you invariably get more (or in this case less) than you bargained for when you put your faith in government mandated standards. As I wrote in the op-ed:
Without this law, consumers would be free to demand tuna caught without setting on dolphins, or they might prefer to buy only tuna whose capture was certified as dolphin safe by an independent observer. Under the current regime, tuna producers are completely prohibited from providing that information on product labels. A policy designed to protect dolphins by harnessing the power of consumers depends on having informed consumers with access to all relevant information. Consumers who want to protect dolphins from tuna fishers are not served by a law that actually protects U.S. tuna fishers from Mexican competition.
Abiding by international rules that promote free trade across borders is easily accomplished by adhering to the principles of free enterprise here at home.
PPI Considers Ex-Im Debate ‘Senseless’
What is the proper role of government in a free society? That is not an unreasonable question to debate in the public square – and to revisit with great frequency. Our era of $4 trillion federal budgets, debt-to-GDP ratios above 100 percent, and policymakers betting big on particular industries – even particular firms (check the WH visitor’s log) – renders that question all the more urgent.
Apparently, the Progressive Policy Institute disagrees. Last week, PPI’s managing director for policy and strategy condescendingly characterized the “protracted battle over the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank” as “senseless,” as though the serious questions raised about Ex-Im’s operations, raison d’etre, costs, and externalities were simply unworthy.
But on what grounds is it senseless to ask Ex-Im apologists to explain why that boondoggle is not corporate welfare that puts taxpayers and “unchosen” businesses at risk? Why is it senseless to force a debate on the merits of earmarking $140 billion for the benefit of a select few companies, when in the “mother of all budget battles” that transpired last year, only $38 billion was cut? Why is it not appropriate to raise questions about the sustainability of a subsidy race that effectively outsources U.S. policy to Beijing or Brussels?
Debate is illuminating. It can be reinforcing and it can raise fresh doubts. And it is essential to the eternal vigilance we must exercise to protect our liberties. Unfortunately, at least one scholar at PPI is so convinced that the questions raised in the debate over Ex-Im are so irrelevant that she recommends a much longer reauthorization period (5, 10, or 15 years) to avoid debate in the future.
Progressives tend to have an abiding faith in the goodness of government, but this proposal would make a dictator blush.
Next, the Sun
The Obama administration has acted to protect Americans from cheap access to solar energy, imposing tariffs of 31 percent and even 250 percent on solar cells and panels imported from China.
As I noted previously, this case echoes one of the most famous documents in the history of free-trade literature, Bastiat‘s famous ”Candlemakers’ Petition.” In that parody, the French economist and parliamentarian imagined the makers of candles and street lamps petitioning the French Chamber of Deputies for protection from a most dastardly foreign competitor:
You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and have little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.
We come to offer you a wonderful opportunity. . . .
We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival … is none other than the sun.
For after all, Bastiat’s petitioners noted, how can the makers of candles and lanterns compete with a light source that is totally free? Chinese solar panels aren’t free, but they’re inexpensive enough to be attractive to American buyers.
Any source that supplies solar panels to American consumers and businesses is a competitor of the American industry. And any source that can deliver any product cheaper than American companies is a tough competitor. Domestic producers will no doubt gain by imposing a tariff on their Chinese competitors. But companies that install solar power will lose, by having to pay higher prices for panels.
Businesses would always prefer a world without competitors. If they can’t outcompete their rivals in the marketplace, they may be tempted to ask the government for protection. And our “antidumping” laws actually invite such complaints. But economists agree that consumers, and the businesses that use imported products, lose more on net than producers gain. Protectionism is a bad deal for the American economy. And in this case, a bad deal for anyone who wants to see more solar energy in the United States.
More on “antidumping” laws here.
Solar Panels Trade Case Mocks Washington’s Ways
Later today the U.S. Department of Commerce is expected to announce preliminary antidumping duties on solar panels from China. This case might normally be met with an exasperated sigh and chalked up as just another example of myopic, self-flagellating, capricious U.S. antidumping policy toward China.
But in this instance the absurdity is magnified by the fact that Washington has already devoted billions of dollars in production subsidies and consumption tax credits in an effort to invent a non-trivial market for solar energy in the United States. Imposing duties only undermines that objective. With brand new levies on imports to add to the duties already being imposed on the same products to “countervail” the lower prices afforded U.S. consumers by the Chinese government’s production subsidies, the administration’s already-expensive mission will become even more so – perhaps prohibitively so.
It’s not that President Obama and the Congress woke up one morning and agreed to craft policies that simultaneously promote and deter U.S. solar energy consumption. But that’s what Washington – with its meddling ethos and self-righteous politicians – has wrought: policies working at cross-purposes.
The Economic Report of the President in 2010 (published before Solyndra became a household name) boasts of the administration’s tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for production and tax credits for consumption of solar panels. This industrial policy continues to this day and there is no greater cheerleader for solar than the president himself. In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama said:
I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power three million homes.
One month later, noting that 16 solar projects have been approved on public land since he took office, the president said:
[Solar] is an industry on the rise. It’s a source of energy that’s becoming cheaper. And more and more businesses are starting to take notice.
The president has couched his support for solar in terms of what he sees as the environmental imperative of reducing carbon emissions and slowing global warming. Thus his policy aim is to encourage consumption by making solar less expensive to retail consumers with production subsidies and consumption tax credits. (Of course, lower-cost solar is a mirage – accounting smoke and mirrors – because the subsidies come from current taxpayers and the tax credits deprive the Treasury of revenues already earmarked, forcing the government to borrow, burdening future taxpayers with principle and interest debt, which is paid with higher taxes down the road).
Selling Work Visas: Auctions or a Tariff?
Yesterday Professor Giovanni Peri presented an immigration reform plan that would auction work visas to employers. As I wrote yesterday, Peri’s plan would diminish the misallocation of current visas but not do much to increase the quantity of work visas. Since the real problem with America’s immigration system is a lack of work visas and green cards, Peri’s plan seeks to solve a rather miniscule problem by comparison.
Proponents of selling visas either support auctioning a limited number of visas to the highest bidders or establishing a tariff that sets prices but allows the quantity to adjust. An immigration tariff is far superior to an auction of numerically limited work visas. You can read my proposal in more detail here or listen me explain it here.
Here are three reasons why an immigration tariff is better than an auction:
First, a tariff is the most market friendly way of restricting work visas. Limiting the government’s role to setting the price of work visas, allowing the purchased quantities to adjust, would make for a much more market-friendly and flexible system. A tariff would decrease immigration relative to open borders, but misallocation isn’t a big concern because immigrants with the most to gain would pay the tariff.
Second, an immigration tariff is more economically efficient because the quantity of work visas would adjust to market demand unlike an auction of numerically limited work visas. When there is economic growth more people would buy work visas to keep pace with labor demand. In slow economic times the number of visa purchases would automatically shrink. With an immigration tariff, there is no need for a government commission to somehow figure out how many are demanded. They can just set the price and let the market figure out the quantity.
Third, an auction system will not do much to diminish unauthorized immigration going forward. An immigration tariff allows immigrants, temporary workers, American businesses, and families to plan ahead, save, borrow, and pool resources to pay the tariff. Tariff prices will change, no doubt, but they won’t change all of the time as they would under Peri’s system. An auction would provide less price certainty, fewer guarantees of entering legally, and incentivize more unauthorized immigration than a tariff.
When Bipartisanship Is A Dirty Word
In a blog post I wrote about two years ago, I said “Usually when I hear that a policy proposal has bipartisan support, I instinctively check for my wallet.” At that time I was lauding a bipartisan proposal to shut the USDA’s market access program (although it seems that idea didn’t get much traction) under the heading “When Bipartisanship Is Good News.”
I should have trusted my instincts; i.e., that “bipartisanship” is code for either:
(a) “we’ve just renamed a post office”;
(b) “cough up, because we’ve agreed to spend more of your money”;
(c) “brace yourself, because we’ve agreed to violate more of your liberties”; or
(d) both b and c (see, e.g., the Department of Homeland Security).
Last night we were treated to an example of (b), when the U.S. Senate in a 78 to 20 vote elected to follow the House’s lead (330 to 93, in that case) to re-authorize, with a bigger budget, the Export-Import Bank of the United States until 2014. (Please do click on the previous two links to the roll-calls so you can see how your friendly Representative or Senator voted on this taxpayer-funded slush fund for the biggest corporations in America, by the way). The bill will now go to the President for his signature.
Allow me a few comments. First, this is incredibly disappointing. One would think that this is an excellent time to shut down the Ex-Im Bank, what with bailout-fatigue, trillion dollar deficits and all. But this bill “had the backing of business and labor groups,” as this Washington Post article makes clear, and despite all of the rhetoric from both sides, it seems that Congress and the President loves them some special interest group pleadings.
Second, the fairly easily debunked talking points of Ex-Im supporters obviously resonated. Ex-Im Bank president Fred Hochburg (who one can hardly expect to do anything other than protect his job) showed an excellent ear for PR when he said “there are no Democratic or Republican exports. There are exports that create jobs. Good, middle-class jobs.” Exports! Jobs! Middle class! What’s not to love? And in the interest of non-partisanship, here’s a quote from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in response to the arguments made by what the WaPo article called ”tea party conservatives”:
“I live in the real world and the real world is that these financing mechanisms have to be available to American manufacturers to have a share of the overseas market”
Actually, Senator, I’m glad you raised “the real world”. Because in “the real world” stuff costs money, money that isn’t manna from heaven but taken from other people. And in the real world, regulations or other market interventions distort the economy, reallocating resources from their most productive uses as identified by volunteers putting their own money at risk and towards uses directed by political entities, responding to lobbying and other features of public choice. In the real world, there is nothing special about manufacturing per se, with lots of middle class (or “upper class” jobs, if the class system is something that matters to you) created in the service sector. Also in the real world? Private finance. Lots of it, as you would know if you spoke with any of the folks producing the 98 percent of U.S. exports that don’t rely on Ex-Im.
Third, and this is somewhat parenthetical, not one — NOT ONE — Democrat in either chamber voted against corporate welfare. Interestingly, according to the roll call for the 2002 re-authorization of the Ex-Im Bank, 26 democrats voted against re-authorization 10 years ago. So there was some opposition back when President Bush was in charge, but now that President Obama (as opposed to Candidate ”The Ex-Im Bank is little more than corporate Welfare” Obama) is supportive, apparently taxpayer guarantees for big business are ok. The following Democratic members switched their vote from “Nay” in 2002 to “Yea” (or should that be “Yay!”?) in 2012: Andrews, Baldwin, Conyers, deFazio, Jackson (IL), Kaptur, Matheson, Nadler, Owens, Pallone, Peterson (MN), Stark, and Waters (with Kucinich not voting in 2012, but voted “Nay” in 2002). I’d be curious to hear about what caused the change of heart.
Selling Work Visas
Professor Giovanni Peri today made an interesting proposal to auction work visas to the highest bidding employer. His reform is similar to an auction proposal made by Gary Becker, but more specific. His idea is innovative and deals with transitioning from the current maze of quotas, visa categories, and other barriers to a more open system that better allocates visas to the highest bidders.
The one problem with Peri’s proposal is that it does not meaningfully increase the number of work visas. The limited number of work visas, not the distribution, is the main problem with America’s immigration system. Instead, he calls for reallocating visas from families to the employment based category. He then wants American employers to bid for the limited quantity of work visas issued quarterly. A government commission would adjust the quantity and immigrants would be free to move between employers who purchase visas.
Economists like Becker and Peri are rightly concerned with how societies allocate scarce resources to different uses, but the scarcity of work visas is an artificial one created by the government, not one that results from a scarcity of the factors of production or other inputs. This is why there should be no numerical limits on the quantity of work visas issued even if they are priced. Charging for work visas is a substantial improvement over the current system, as I say here, here, here, and here. Most of the welfare gains come from allowing the quantity of visas to adjust to the price, not the other way around. An efficient visa selling process will operate more like a tariff than an auction.
For normal goods and services, a rising price incentivizes consumers to limit their consumption and producers to increase production. A government commission tasked with adjusting visa quantities would face political rather than market incentives and not increase visas in response to rising prices. Unless the incentives are carefully aligned, the result would probably be a more arbitrary and numerically limited immigration system.
Another problem with Peri’s proposal is that it only allows employers to bid for work visas. Immigrants should also be able to bid because they have the most to gain from migrating and have a better notion of their value on the labor market. Immigrants already pay to be smuggled into the United States—some Chinese pay $75,000 per person—so that money might as well be collected by the federal government instead of a coyote. If employers buy visas for specific immigrants, contracts or bonds can effectively guarantee compliance.
Peri’s proposal is a thoughtful and serious attempt to reform immigration but it does not address the main problem with our immigration system: too few work visas.
Caribbean Trade Dispute Gives the U.S. a Rum for Its Money
Rum subsidies in U.S. Caribbean islands have sparked an internal trade war and are inviting a World Trade Organization (WTO) challenge from ill-affected countries in the region. According to an envoy representing a number of Caribbean countries that recently came to Washington, the U.S. government is unwittingly funding industrial policy in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico by tying aid dollars to rum production in a way that is inconsistent with our trade obligations and may cause the destruction of the entire foreign Caribbean rum industry. Under current law, U.S. Caribbean islands receive money from the U.S. treasury based on how much rum they import to the mainland. In recent years, they’ve begun to use that money to increase the amount of rum they produce, so they can get even more money. Although the total amount of money involved is low enough to keep it under Congress’s (myopic) radar, the resulting subsidies are too high for independent Caribbean economies to compete against. Unless Congress places restrictions on how the money can be used, the United States could once again find itself in the embarrassing position of being taken before the WTO for accidentally ruining the economy of a small Caribbean island.
The antagonist in this saga is something known as the “rum cover-over” program. As it does with all distilled spirits, the federal government charges an excise tax of $13.50 per proof gallon of rum sold in the United States. This equates to roughly $2 per bottle. Under the cover-over program, almost all of that money is directly granted to the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico using a complex formula so that each receives a share of the money based on how much rum it produces relative to the other. The tax is collected from sales of all rum imported to the mainland, even from other countries, and in 2010 the cover-over amounted to approximately $450 million—$100 million to the Virgin Islands and $350 million to Puerto Rico.
The industrial death spiral began when the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands cleverly discovered that, instead of using the money for infrastructure and welfare programs, it could use the bulk of the money to entice Captain Morgan producer Diageo to relocate there from Puerto Rico. Because the move will increase rum production in the U.S. Virgin Islands relative to Puerto Rico, the subsidy more than pays for itself by it helping the territory capture a larger share of cover-over funds.
Puerto Rico initially asked Congress for help. There is currently no rule on how the two entities can spend the cover-over funds, so Puerto Rico’s non-voting delegate to Congress, known as a Resident Commissioner, proposed legislation that would cap at 15 percent the portion of the funds that could be used to subsidize rum production. When that effort failed, the Puerto Rican government reportedly responded by ramping up its own subsidy programs. The result has been an expensive trade war over mainland consumer tax dollars granted in return for rum production. For perspective on how important this is for the players involved, it’s worth noting that the U.S. Virgin Islands government has an annual budget of just under $1 billion dollars and is hoping to increase its cover-over revenue from $100 million to $240 million.
The new twist on this saga comes from the detrimental effect this subsidy war has had on rum production in other parts of the Caribbean. Matched up against firms receiving U.S. subsidies reported to be close to or even to exceed production costs, producers in other Caribbean countries are unable to compete in the U.S. market on price. These economies generally rely on tourism and raw material exports and have precious few value-added industries. If the United States is interested in economic development in the region, the least it could do is refrain from crippling emerging industries with unfair subsidies. While the two U.S. Caribbean governments spend federal tax dollars to entice major rum brands to their islands in order to earn more federal tax dollars, the rest of the Caribbean is struggling just to stay afloat.
Alabama Business Death Penalty
Alabama’s state level immigration law is probably the worst in the United States. Next Wednesday the Alabama Senate is going debate some minor changes that would soften some parts.
But there is some disagreement over how to reform it. Senator Scott Beason (R-Gardendale) and Representative Micky Hammon (R-Decatur), the co-sponsors of the original bill, differ on how much to punish businesses for hiring the workers they want. Hammon wants to loosen the penalties for businesses who violate the law as well as some other sections. Beason is upset that Hammon wants to loosen the punishments for businesses that violate the immigration law. He said,
I do not want to put both employer sections at risk. You change one, you change both, and both end up embroiled in court for a few years.
Too bad he doesn’t have the same aversion to embroiling small businesses in court because they violated some arcane sections of American immigration law.
The Alabama immigration law currently punishes second time business offenders with a total revocation of their business licenses, a punishment called the “business death penalty.” Hammon wants to eliminate the automatic death penalty and allow judges more discretion in setting punishments. The business death penalty in Arizona, the basis for Alabama’s law, is rarely enforced but it’s a source of regulatory uncertainty and escalating compliance costs there. Harsh punishments for small infractions are intended to stir up fear and deter illegality where mass enforcement is impractical, which is certainly the case here.
State level immigration laws target unauthorized immigrants but businesses and entrepreneurs are hurt in the process. The entire economy then has to deal with another set of complex and uncertain business regulations. Small tweaks to Alabama’s immigration law will not be enough. When anti-immigration laws apply death penalties to American businesses for the sake of enforcing antiquated laws, it’s time to rethink the entire premise of our immigration restrictions.
The TPP Trade Negotiations Need More Japan and Less Detroit
If you harbor any doubts that the parameters of U.S. trade policy are defined by a few politically-important domestic industries, take a look at the debate over whether Japan should be allowed to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.
Did you miss it? That’s because there really hasn’t been much debate; there has been near-unanimous support for the idea in the United States.
In December 2011, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative requested comments from the public about Japan’s expression of interest in joining the TPP talks. In response, 115 submissions were filed on behalf of various U.S. interests (small to large companies, trade associations, unions, and other NGOs). Five of the responses flat out rejected the idea of Japan’s participation; five expressed a willingness to support Japan’s participation with conditions, and 105 expressed no-strings-attached support for Japan joining the talks. In other words, 91 percent of the respondents were unequivocally in favor of Japan’s participation in the negotiations.
Yet, four months after reviewing those comments, the Obama administration is equivocal about the matter.
With 91 percent in favor, the only formula that could produce executive equivocation is one that weights extremely heavily the views of those expressing opposition to Japan’s participation. Which of these five dissenters’ views are likely to be getting extra special consideration from the administration on this matter: Humane Society International, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the Maine Citizen Trade Policy Commission, the Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, or the American Automotive Policy Council (hint: the lobbying arm of the “Detroit 3” – Ford, GM, and Chrysler)?
Ex-Im Reauthorization Vote Expected Tomorrow
House legislators have reached a “compromise” deal to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States until 2014 and at an increased funding level ($120 billion, with a possible increase to $140 billion). The compromise builds on a bill crafted by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) I blogged about in March, but seems to largely be a win for the pro-bank folks judging by the increased funding levels, with the “compromise” part being not much more than pathetic sops to those concerned about the bank’s mission, if not its very existence.
Inside U.S. Trade [$] has more details:
House Republican and Democratic leaders late last week announced that they had a reached a compromise deal to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank through fiscal year 2014 and immediately raise its lending cap to $120 billion, with the possibility of further increases to $140 billion during that period if default rates are kept low and other conditions are met. The House expects to consider the bill on Wednesday (May 9) under suspension of rules, a House GOP aide said.
The bill contains a longer reauthorization, and a higher lending cap, than what was included in an initial draft bill floated by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in March. That draft bill would have renewed the bank’s charter only through June 2013, and would have raised the lending cap to $113 billion, up from the current level of $100 billion.
At the same time, the compromise bill reflects some of the demands of Cantor and other Republicans who are wary of reauthorizing the activities of a bank they say puts taxpayer money at risk and distorts the free market.
For instance, it conditions further increases in the lending cap, to $140 billion for fiscal year 2014, on the bank maintaining a default rate on outstanding loans that is below two percent and submitting other required reports. It also includes language from Cantor’s draft instructing the president to enter into negotiations with other countries to substantially reduce official export financing in general and for aircraft in particular, with the goal of ultimately eliminating such financing altogether.
Under suspension of rules, which is a procedure typically reserved for non-controversial legislation, debate is limited to 40 minutes and the bill must garner a two-thirds majority to pass.
The article goes on to describe all of the ostensible brakes that the Republican leadership have insisted placing on Ex-Im, but they really amount to the usual Washington ways of pretending they are implementing real reform: calls for the bank to issue business plans, address GAO concerns, be more transparent, etc. Nothing, unfortunately, about changing the accounting rules under which the bank operates let alone setting a path to winding down the bank altogether.
In short, the “compromise” is just fiddling while Washington is awash in red ink, and the federal government encroaches more and more into what should be private markets.
Misguided Misgivings about the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill
Those of us who view import tariffs as distortive taxes on consumption and production tend to find merit in any effort to reduce them. That’s why Senator Jim DeMint’s opposition to the perennial import duty suspension process known as the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB) seems a bit misplaced. DeMint has – according to Cato’s Congressional Trade Votes database – a glowing record of unfettered support for free trade. So what’s DeMint’s problem with the MTB?
Well, the MTB is a vehicle through which duties on certain, “non-controversial” products – usually raw materials or intermediate goods, such as chemicals, electronic components, and mechanical parts, used by downstream U.S. firms to produce their own output – are temporarily suspended for two or three years. A product is considered non-controversial if its proposed duty suspension engenders no opposition from a domestic producer and if its suspension will not reduce tariff “revenues” by more than $500,000.
Given those conditions (temporary, no domestic producers, tariff savings of no more than $500,000 per product), the MTB is hardly the kind of bold reform to spark an economic renaissance. It’s far from the kind of across-the-board, even-if-we-have-domestic-producer-opposition, unilateral trade liberalization that would really help U.S.-based firms reduce their costs and compete more effectively at home and abroad, and help U.S. individuals and families reduce their costs of living. But that shortcoming – the MTB’s smallness – is, regrettably, not the basis for DeMint’s opposition.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on Google+
Cato on YouTube
