Below are supportive statements from a diverse range of columnists, editorial boards, and national thought leaders regarding President Obama’s trade agenda.
AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS AND THE ECONOMIC RULES OF THE ROAD
Tom Friedman, New York Times, 4/29/2015: “I strongly support President Obama’s efforts to conclude big, new trade-opening agreements with our Pacific allies, including Japan and Singapore, and with the whole European Union. But I don’t support them just for economic reasons…. As Obama told his liberal critics Friday: If we abandon this effort to expand trade on our terms, ‘China, the 800-pound gorilla in Asia will create its own set of rules,’ signing bilateral trade agreements one by one across Asia ‘that advantage Chinese companies and Chinese workers and ... reduce our access ... in the fastest-growing, most dynamic economic part of the world.’ But if we get the Pacific trade deal done, ‘China is going to have to adapt to this set of trade rules that we’ve established.’ If we fail to do that, he added, 20 years from now we’ll ‘look back and regret it.’ That’s the only thing he got wrong. We will regret it much sooner.”
Fareed Zakaria, CNN and Time Magazine, 5/14/2015: “The world we live in is one of rising new powers and declining old norms. The struggle is on to write new rules — for trade, cybersecurity, intellectual property and much more. Let’s hope we don’t look back 20 years from now, under new rules written by China, and wish we had been more assertive when we had the chance.”
Washington Post Editorial, 1/22/2015: “By and large, these Asian countries seek to maintain a strong U.S. presence in their region as a counterweight to Chinese influence. An agreement that would organize trade in the Pacific Rim according to U.S. free-trade principles rather than China’s mercantilist goals is therefore a vital interest for them — and for the United States. Both economically and geopolitically, the Trans-Pacific Partnership would perpetuate the United States’ stabilizing role in Asia; it is one of the Obama administration’s brightest ideas. All that’s left now is for both the president and Republican leaders in Congress to keep their promises and make it happen.”
Robert Samuelson, Washington Post, 5/4/2015: “A Trans-Pacific Partnership failure — because countries don’t agree or Congress kills the final result — could produce a historic watershed. Present U.S. trade policy dates to congressional passage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which authorized the president to negotiate tariff cuts with other countries. (Before that, U.S. trade policy was highly protectionist.) A TPP rejection could mean the end of an era….We seek to reassure nations that we’re still a Pacific power and that our proposal represents a useful framework to govern the region’s trade. A collapse would leave a vacuum that China would most likely fill. Through its own trade agreements, China might fashion a system that gives its exports preferential access to foreign markets, while securing guaranteed supplies of raw materials (oil, grains, minerals). That’s not in our interests. So when opponents criticize the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they need to answer a simple question: compared to what?”
Jonathan Alter, Daily Beast, 6/4/2015: “See, China is what this whole thing is all about. And it’s actually the best argument for approving this trade deal, is that if we don't do this deal with all of these other Asian countries, China will give them preferential treatment in their trade relations with no environmental or labor standards. Terrible for the united states, terrible for workers around the world. So what this is is a big struggle over the next 10, 15 years over who has more control over the rules of international commerce, the United States or China? We want it to be our rules. That’s what the president was saying. That’s a huge argument for supporting this deal.”
David Gergen, CNN, 5/1/2014: “Experts have long said that much of the success of the famous ‘pivot’ will depend upon completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most important trade agreement in decades.”
Marc Ambinder, The Week, 3/4/2015: “As soon as TPP negotiations got underway, China began to speed up separate agreements with several countries that are party to the TPP. It’s part of a 16-country Regional Cooperation and Economic Partnership (RCEP) that looks to modernize and streamline the roughly 100 or so trade agreements between Asian countries. RCEP is a great agreement for its signatories, and especially for China, which holds a lot of sway over the specific rules that are adopted. That’s fine; China can do what it wants. In the absence of a strong, U.S.-imprinted trade policy across the Pacific, China will negotiate the trade agreements on the terms most favorable to its industries and political ambitions. The U.S. will also be compelled by logic to offer terms that are more favorable to American companies and consumers, as well as terms that Asian countries would also find favorable. Example: Chinese trade principles would force U.S. companies to disclose proprietary information before they get access to Chinese markets.”
USA Today Editorial, 5/4/2015: “A major agreement is going to happen, one way or another. China is pushing an alternative plan, one that does not include any countries in the Americas, and that Asian countries would turn to if the trans-Pacific deal falls through. That approach would freeze U.S. exporters out of the fastest growing region in the world. It would also enhance China's economic power and its influence over its neighbors. The pan-Pacific deal, on the other hand, would help the U.S. retain a key role in the region, while promoting competition that would give consumers more choices and lower costs….It's time for the U.S. to set aside petty concerns and stand up for its strategic interests. The Trans-Pacific Partnership shouldn't even be a close call.”
TPP AS A NEXT-GENERATION AGREEMENT
Financial Times Editorial, 1/8/2015: “Finally, the geopolitical moment is ripe. Concluding the TPP would be an integral part of Mr Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’. The deal would encompass roughly 40 per cent of the world’s economy. China is not a part of it. But TPP’s conclusion would give Beijing a strong incentive to work with its neighbours to meet their standards. The same applies to TTIP, whose advocates in Brussels and Washington see as a potential gold standard for trade and investment.”
USA Today Editorial, 6/8/2015: “The Trans-Pacific pact is less of a traditional trade deal as it is a set of rules for how commerce should be conducted in an era of emerging nations and technologies. The deal would promote American intellectual property, high-tech, financial services and other industries. Its impact on manufacturing would be limited because American manufacturers have grown more efficient and less vulnerable to overseas competition. The deal would also help instill a Western approach to capitalism by placing limits on state-sponsored industries. If it's not approved, Asian nations would likely seek a trade deal with China, one that would not include the Americas and would be much more amenable to China's point of view.”
Ron Brownstein, National Journal, 6/5/2015: “As with NAFTA, it's easy to overstate the economic stakes in the Pacific trade debate. Peter Petri, a Brandeis University professor who supports the agreement, has projected that the TPP would not increase or decrease total U.S. employment a decade after implementation. But Petri does forecast that more workers would shift to export-related industries, which pay more than other jobs, raising overall incomes. Signing or sinking the agreement won't eliminate the long-term pressure on U.S. living standards. But the TPP represents a bet on opening more doors for America's most dynamic industries in the world's most economically dynamic region. A confident nation would help the workers the agreement might displace—and then boldly barrel through that doorway.”
Marc Ambinder, The Week, 3/4/2015: “Liberals are skeptical that the labor protections that TPP includes — protections, by the way, which NAFTA held to the side, would not be enforced by Republican administrations in the future. But that’s a weird argument. It might be hard to convince Vietnam to adopt the standards proscribed from the International Labor Organization, but surely it would be harder if Vietnam had not signed a trade pact promising adherence to them.”
Joe Nocera, New York Times, 1/24/2015: “One mistake the Nafta negotiators made more than two decades ago was taking worker rights and environmental protections out of the agreement itself and putting them into a side letter. They were never effectively enforced. Those negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership expect to rectify that error this go-round. They are also aiming to pry open the Japanese auto and agricultural markets to American producers, and include protections for a free and open Internet. It has, in other words, a lot more potential to do good than harm.”
David Ignatius, Washington Post, 4/3/2014: “Name a foreign policy issue on which China and most of the rest of the world’s nations are struggling to keep up with a U.S. initiative. If you guessed ‘free trade,’ you’re correct.…A Pacific agreement is important because it would add momentum for truly global trade standards and market access. The TPP countries account for about 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and 40 percent of U.S. exports. According to the trade representative’s office, an agreement could add $223 billion to global income by 2025 and boost U.S. exports by $124 billion. That means jobs, here and abroad.”
Tom Friedman, New York Times, 2/16/2014: “In such an era, one of the two most valuable things Washington can do to create more good jobs and wealth is to open more export markets. The other is to have an immigration policy that not only provides a legal pathway to citizenship for those here illegally but enables America to attract the best brainpower and apply that talent to the data mountains and software opportunities we’re creating. But Washington these days won’t even do the league minimum. As The Economist observed in an essay entitled ‘When Harry Mugged Barry,’ both the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with big Asian markets like Japan, which is almost done, and the U.S.-European Union trade deal, which is being negotiated, are ‘next generation’ agreements that even the playing field for us by requiring higher environmental and labor standards from our trading partners and more access for our software and services.”
Tim Carney, Washington Examiner, 2/10/2015: “In trade deal, Obama takes a worthy stand against state-owned corporations…Alongside the constraints on state-owned enterprises, U.S. negotiators are also demanding new anti-corruption rules. U.S. trade officials see these two provisions as part of a campaign to pull developing Asian economies, such as Vietnam and Malaysia, towards the West and market economies, and away from the cronyist economies of China and Russia. If the U.S. succeeds in its efforts on state-owned enterprises and public corruption, Obama could end up scoring a real and lasting victory for free enterprise.”
TRADE PROMOTION AUTHORITY
Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post, 5/23/2015: “No trade deal is perfect. The U.S. won’t get everything it wants in the negotiations, but it’s getting pretty darned close. And the people’s representatives in Congress have and have always had the ability to see and shape the forthcoming agreement. Once completed, its terms will be seen by all and debated at the Capitol. That’s as it should be. But this nation cannot pretend the world and the global economy haven’t changed since 1994. And Democrats cannot pretend that a progressive president who has championed the cause of the middle class and who they have supported for the last six years would negotiate ‘a bad deal’ that further put American workers at risk. The House needs to pass TPA so that TPP can be completed and move towards final passage. It’s not ‘greasing the skids.’ In the 21st century global economy, it’s a necessity.”
William Galston, Wall Street Journal and the Brookings Institution, 1/13/2015: “Trade experts and veterans of past negotiations believe that attaining this goal requires trade- promotion authority—the sooner the better…. Everyone with whom I have talked stresses how vital TPA is to a manageable legislative process. Without a closed rule that prohibits amendments in the House and its functional equivalent in the Senate, which is what TPA amounts to, the draft would be exposed to hundreds of special-interest amendments.”
Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg View and National Review, 5/12/2015: “The answer to all these concerns is that there's a simple remedy if the president makes a bad deal: Congress can vote the TPP down. Nothing in the deal will be secret at that point (and there are plenty of ways to learn about it even now). Congress should then judge if the deal's investor protections or intellectual-property provisions go too far. Making TPP subject to congressional amendment wouldn't improve anything; it would only make a deal less likely in the first place, since other countries wouldn't be confident that the agreement they negotiated would stick.”
Jonathan Alter, Daily Beast, 5/20/2015: “But in terms of fast track authority, the issue that’s in front of us right now, here I don’t think that the opponents of it have the better of the argument. It’s like saying, well let's negotiate the Iran deal in Congress and have every yahoo Republican, you know, put in an amendment. That’s not the way you make foreign policy. And this trade deal is foreign policy as well as economic policy.”
Wall Street Journal Editorial, 5/11/2015: “If the U.S. fails to adopt trade-promotion authority, or does it with damaging amendments, the world will note another milestone in American economic decline. In the Pacific especially, China will pick up the pieces to further its goal of regional and global strategic dominance, not prosperity-enhancing free trade for everyone.”
Scott Lincicome, The Federalist and the Cato Institute, 6/9/2015: “…Congress under TPA retains total control over the international trade authority granted to it by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Any trade agreement negotiated by the president (which he has constitutional authority to do under Article II) still must be approved by Congress….Because neither branch gets expansive new powers or short-changed, Congress has granted every U.S. president since FDR some form of trade negotiating authority.”
Los Angeles Times Editorial, 4/21/2015: “The fast-track bill won't force Congress to approve whatever the negotiators hand them — lawmakers can still vote it down — but not having fast-track will pretty much guarantee that there will be nothing to vote on. And that would be a terrible mistake, because it would deny the United States the chance to bring more trading partners up to first-world standards for labor, environmental protection, intellectual property, Internet openness and other important elements of the 21st century economy.”
- Los Angeles Times Editorial, 3/10/2015: “Lawmakers critical of the as-yet unfinished Trans-Pacific Partnership complain that the administration has been eager only to tell them what it was proposing, not to accommodate their concerns. Yet Congress hasn't enacted a fast-track law since 2002, leaving the U.S. Trade Representative to rely on 13-year-old negotiating objectives. That delay has been caused mainly by lawmakers who don't like free-trade deals, period, although they've been joined more recently by trade supporters spooked by the Pacific agreement. It's a cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face strategy that has prevented Congress from telling the administration — not to mention Japan, Vietnam and the other countries negotiating that deal — what it expects from the pact.”
TRANSPARENCY
Bloomberg View, 5/2/2015: “By their very nature, treaty negotiations are usually classified until they're finished. If they weren't, countries wouldn't hand over proprietary data and take political risks. Moreover, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says it has held about 1,700 meetings on TPP with lawmakers and their staffs.…A couple of years ago, it was a valid argument that the Obama administration was being excessively secretive about the TPP. That is no longer so. Now, the secrecy debate is drowning out any discussion of how the deal plays to U.S. strengths by opening doors to its flourishing agricultural and service sectors. The agreement would make it easier for U.S. companies to compete abroad by limiting government subsidies to state-owned enterprises. No less important, it would bring participating countries closer to U.S. environmental and labor standards.”
Washington Post Editorial, 4/26/2015: “Since when does the U.S. government negotiate international agreements in public? Anyway, labor unions are on U.S. trade representative Michael Froman’s advisory committees and receive regular briefings from him. In a representative democracy, Congress stands in for ‘regular people’; members frequently meet Mr. Froman and his staff.”
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, 5/19/2015: “This is not secrecy for secrecy’s sake; it’s secrecy for the sake of negotiating advantage. Exposing U.S. bargaining positions or the offers of foreign counterparts to public view before the agreement is completed would undermine the outcome….This is not secrecy until the end of time; in fact, it’s secrecy with an explicit end. The fast-track trade-promotion authority now being debated in the Senate requires that the underlying trade deal be made public 60 days before signing — the first time such a waiting period has been imposed….This is not secrecy that excludes lawmakers. In fact, every one of them can see the text of the still-evolving deal….Bottom line: The secrecy argument is mere excuse. The people using it wouldn’t be happy with this trade deal if the negotiations were broadcast live on C-SPAN.”
Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post, 5/23/2015: “The voluminous and changing deal sits in a basement room in the Capitol where members and staff with security clearances can read it. Any member of Congress who wants to be briefed on the emerging agreement or ask questions about what they are reading can call the offices of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). According to the folks at USTR, there have been more than 1,700 in-person briefings on the deal. In fact, Ambassador Michael Froman, who is the USTR, has personally briefed Warren on various aspects of TPP.”
Scott Lincicome, The Federalist and the Cato Institute, 6/9/2015: “Probably the most-repeated myth right now isn’t even related to TPA but instead to the TPP, which is still being negotiated. According to the anti-TPA script, the TPP is so secret that nobody knows what’s in it, and—much like Obamacare legislation—nobody, not even Congress, will know what’s in it until the agreement is passed into law. Once again, however, nothing could be further from the truth…”
THE U.S. HAS A DISPROPORTINATELY OPEN ECONOMY
Fareed Zakaria, CNN and Time Magazine, 5/14/2015: “For those who worry that, after the TPP, the United States would have to compete against low-wage countries — it’s too late. As Zachary Karabell notes, we are already living in a free-trade world. The average tariff in the developed world is about 3 percent. And in the past three decades, developing countries have cut their tariffs substantially as well. The World Trade Organization notes that China’s average is less than 10 percent today, down from about 40 percent in 1985….The United States has one of the world’s most open economies. Any trade deal like the TPP is going to open other economies — the Japanese or Vietnamese, for example — far more than the American. And the nature of the opening and the new rules will reflect American ideals and interests.”
Michael Grunwald, Politico, 6/1/2015: “Overall, the U.S. imposes an average tariff of 1.4 percent on foreign goods, less than half the average for the rest of the nations Froman is negotiating with, barely a fourth the average in Vietnam and Malaysia. And it can get much worse for specific industries and products. TPP nations have tariffs ranging up to 100 percent on textiles, 87 percent on corn, and 75 percent on consumer goods, not to mention selected Japanese tariffs that amount to 189 percent on U.S. shoes and a don’t-even-think-about-it 778 percent on U.S. rice above a certain annual quota.”
- Michael Grunwald, Politico, 6/1/2015: “In some TPP countries, tariffs not only make U.S. exports more expensive, they make U.S. exports more expensive relative to goods from other countries. For example, America’s construction equipment only faces a 5 percent tariff in New Zealand, but construction equipment from Southeast Asia faces no tariffs there. Vietnam slaps tariffs of 20 percent on beauty and skin products from the U.S. while importing similar products from its Asian neighbors duty-free. Vietnam’s tariffs for U.S. poultry are also twice as high as for Australian poultry, and its tariffs for switches, relays and fuses made in America are four times as high as for the same products made in China.”
BIPARTISAN COLLABORATION
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post and Fox News, 11/06/2014: “Like fast-track trade negotiation authority that Harry Reid killed and that Obama, like all presidents, wants. Republicans should propose and pass it, thereby giving Obama a victory and demonstrating both bipartisanship and magnanimity (as well as economic good sense).”
Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 4/18/2015: “This is a hit to Senators Orrin Hatch, Republican, and Ron Wyden, Democrat, along with Paul Ryan in Congress, for putting together a deal which will give the president fast-track authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement. It is one of the largest trade agreements in history. It would bind the United States and 12 countries in the Pacific region to a trade pact, which would involve 40 percent of the world's trade. It's a win for that side of the Pacific but it's mostly a win for our side of the Pacific, for our workers, for our manufacturing sectors, for our economy. We should pass this. It's the one good thing Obama may do in his presidency.”
David Ignatius, Washington Post, 1/4/2015: “I just would say one final thing about this issue of whether bipartisanship is back. The president has decided that he wants to make trade and trade agreements part of his legacy, he can`t do that without Republican votes. In that sense the Republican gains in midterm elections are good news in terms of getting trade legislation passed. It will be easier. And that is part of what I think the White House is saying. This is crucial to us, it`s important to you. Let`s try to do this part together.”
Robert Costa, Washington Post, 1/4/2015: “Really keep an eye on the new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. He's trying to take the reins of the party and show on health care, on trade and numerous other issues that the party ahead of 2016 can govern responsibly, move away from the shutdown path and really cast a new image for the party. And I think that's the goal with a lot of legislation. They're going to be trying to pass in both chambers.”
