Seven (Free-Market) Ways to Boost U.S. Exports
President Obama has committed his administration to the ambitious goal of doubling U.S. exports in the next five years. I don’t believe the government should be setting such targets—the rate of growth of U.S. exports should be left to the marketplace—but I am all for the administration seeking ways to expand the freedom of U.S. companies to sell in global markets.
In the “Economic Watch” column of the Washington Times today, I suggest six policy changes that will help American producers sell more of their goods and services abroad. None of them involve subsidies, threats of sanctions, or other government involvement.
Among my suggestions: enact into law the three free-trade agreements that have already been negotiated, repeal the trade embargo against Cuba, keep trade peace with China, and set a good example by keeping the U.S. market open.
If I could have added another suggestion (alas, space in a real newspaper is limited), it would be to issue more visas for trade delegations visiting the United States. Under misguided notions of national security, we make it more difficult than it should be for delegations from China and other markets to visit the United States to inspect U.S. goods offered for sale. But like the other suggestions, this one is politically challenging as well.
If the president wants to boost exports, he will need to show the necessary leadership to remove the government-imposed barriers that still remain.
19 U.S. States Sold $1 Billion or More in China in 2009
The U.S.-China Business Council has performed a valuable public service by marshalling state-by-state figures on exports to China. In its annual survey, released this morning, the USCBC documents that 19 states exported $1 billion or more in 2009 to China, which is now the third largest market for U.S. exports.
In a statement accompanying the report, the USCBC noted that exports to China declined only slightly in 2009, compared to a 20 percent plunge in exports to the rest of the world. Top U.S. exports to China last year were computers and electronics, agricultural products, chemicals, and transportation equipment.
The USCBC figures tend to undercut complaints that China’s currency policies have stymied U.S. exports to that country. In fact, as I argued in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times last week, since 2005, U.S. exports to China have been growing three times faster than our exports to the rest of the world.
There is agreement across the spectrum that the Chinese government should continue to move toward a more flexible, market-priced currency. But the export numbers do not give any support to the critics who want to threaten sanctions against China. In fact, as I concluded in my op-ed:
If the Obama administration hopes to double U.S. exports in the next five years, as the president announced in his State of the Union address, it should praise China for its growing appetite for U.S. goods and services, not threaten it with trade sanctions. Any company hoping to double its sales in the next five years would be foolish to pick a needless fight with one of its best customers.
Time to Lose the Trade Enforcement Fig Leaf
During his SOTU address last week, the president declared it a national goal to double our exports over the next five years. As my colleague Dan Griswold argues (a point that is echoed by others in this NYT article), such growth is probably unrealistic. But with incomes rising in China, India and throughout the developing world, and with huge amounts of savings accumulated in Asia, strong U.S. export growth in the years ahead should be a given—unless we screw it up with a provocative enforcement regime.
The president said:
If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules.
Ah, the enforcement canard!
One of the more persistent myths about trade is that we don’t adequately enforce our trade agreements, which has given our trade partners license to cheat. And that chronic cheating—dumping, subsidization, currency manipulation, opaque market barriers, and other underhanded practices—the argument goes, explains our trade deficit and anemic job growth.
But lack of enforcement is a myth that was concocted by congressional Democrats (Sander Levin chief among them) as a fig leaf behind which they could abide Big Labor’s wish to terminate the trade agenda. As the Democrats prepared to assume control of Congress in January 2007, better enforcement—along with demands for actionable labor and environmental standards—was used to cast their opposition to trade as conditional, even vaguely appealing to moderate sensibilities. But as is evident in Congress’s enduring refusal to consider the three completed bilateral agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea (which all exceed Democratic demands with respect to labor and the environment), Democratic opposition to trade is not conditional, but systemic.
Mainstream Media’s Trade Gap
In a post at the Enterprise Blog two days ago, economist Mark Perry deftly parodies a typical mainstream media account of trade protectionism by editing the story in redline to contrast its original presentation with its true significance. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s the first paragraph:
WASHINGTON POST (Reuters) – A U.S. trade panel gave final approval on Wednesday to duties taxes ranging from 10 to 16 percent on cost-conscious firms in the U.S. who purchase low-priced Chinese-made steel pipe rather than high-price domestic pipe, in the biggest U.S. trade case to date against China American companies (and their shareholders, employees, and customers) who shop globally for their inputs and find the best value in China.
Perry’s point—and I share his frustration—is that the mainstream media typically fail to convey even a sense of the costs of U.S. protectionism to U.S. interests even though Americans (and non-Americans living in the U.S.) bear the greatest burden of that protectionism. When the U.S. government imposes duties on Chinese steel, it is imposing taxes on U.S. consuming industries, their employees, their shareholders, and their customers.
Is Trade Policy Obsolete?
That is one of the conclusions in my new paper, “Made on Earth: How Global Economic Integration Renders Trade Policy Obsolete.”
For hundreds of years, trade policy has been premised on the assumptions that exports are good, imports are bad, and the interests of domestic producers are tantamount to the “national interest.” Though that mercantilist worldview has never been accurate, its persistence as a pillar of trade policy into the 21st century is especially confounding given the emergence and proliferation of disaggregated production processes, transnational supply chains, and cross-border investment. Those trends have blurred any meaningful distinctions between “our” producers and “their” producers and speak to a long chain of interdependent economic interests between product conception and consumption.
Ask Consumers if They Like a Weak Dollar
According to a Washington Post story today, “the weak dollar is one problem the United States loves to have.” The story reports how the fall of the dollar against the euro and other currencies in the past year has boosted U.S. exports and discouraged imports, cutting the trade deficit and allegedly boosting the U.S. economy. A weaker dollar has spurred complaints in Europe and elsewhere, but here at home the Post story leaves the impression the approval is practically unanimous.
Nowhere in the 1,058-word story is the impact on consumers ever mentioned. But it is American consumers who pay the biggest price when the dollars we earn buy less on global markets. We are paying more for oil, which not coincidentally has zoomed toward $80 as the dollar flounders. A weaker dollar means higher prices than we would pay otherwise for a range of goods, from imported shoes and clothing to food, that loom large in the budgets of American families struggling to make ends meet in this difficult economy.
Ignoring consumer interests is widespread in reporting about trade. It reflects the strong bias of elected officials to see trade issues strictly through the lens of producers and never consumers. After all, it is producers who form trade groups and hire lobbyists to promote their exports or protect themselves from imports. Nobody in Washington represents the diffused, disorganized but much more numerous 100 million American households.
The dollar’s value should be set by markets, and I have no reason to believe the dollar is over- or undervalued. But pardon me if I dissent from the consensus that a falling dollar is unambiguously good news.
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?
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