Obama's Export Plan Pushing More Free Trade: a Continuing Disaster

Publisher's note: Can't we learn from our past mistakes?

President Barack Obama Thursday laid out his plans for a National Export Initiative, which he says would double America’s exports in five years, create two million news jobs and allow the nation to remain the world’s top exporter.

In a speech at the annual Export-Import Bank conference, Obama said that his plan would rebuild “an economy where we generate more American jobs in more American industries by producing and exporting more goods and services to other nations.” 

To achieve that goal, the president announced the creation of two new panels that would advise him on matters pertaining to trade and export promotion.  The first is an informal export advisory panel.  The president announced that Jim McNerney, president and CEO of Boeing, along with Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, would be the first two members appointed to the panel.  Obama also announced the revival of the president’s Export Promotion Cabinet.  It will be made up of Secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Labor and other relevant agencies.

Another aspect of the plan involves providing more aid to small and medium-sized businesses, both in terms of financing and advocacy, so that they can more easily sell their goods and services abroad.  The president announced that a $2 billion credit facility through the Export-Import Bank would be created.  On the advocacy front, he said that the U.S. would be conducting over 40 trade missions this year alone. 

Key to achieving the goal, Obama said, would be increased enforcement of existing trade agreements. 

His administration is “working to knock down barriers that unfairly keep American companies from markets we belong in, hold our trade partners to their labor and environmental obligations, and crack down on practices that blatantly harm our companies,” he told the audience, according to prepared remarks. 

He also said his administration would make it a priority to better protect American intellectual property and to take China to task for its trade distorting practice of purposely undervaluing its currency, although the president has vowed to do so before and failed to follow through.   
"China moving to a more market-oriented exchange rate would make an essential contribution to that global re-balancing effort," Obama said. 

The plan also involves more free trade agreements, including the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, completion of the Doha agreement and the already negotiated trade pacts with Columbia, South Korea and Panama.

"I know the issue of exports and imports; the issue of trade and globalization; have long evoked the passions of a lot of people in this country.  I know there are differences of opinion between Democrats and Republicans; business and labor; about the right approach. But I also know we're at a moment where necessity has tempered the old debates. 

"We are at a moment where it is absolutely necessary for us to get beyond those old debates. . . . Those who once would oppose any trade agreement now understand that there are new markets and new sectors out there that we need to break into if we want our workers to get ahead," he said in an effort to alleviate the concerns of the members of his own party who have held the aforementioned deals up because of glaring flaws.  

Many simply do not believe that increased “free trade” will do much more than add to an already exploding trade deficit which will result in massive job loss. 

"The problem is that because the level of imports is larger than exports, if both increase at roughly the same pace the trade deficit will widen again," Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, said, according to The Los Angeles Times.