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Dem Dim Dems and Trade

INVALUABLE LESSONS FOR THE LO-LECT (LOW INTELLECT LIBS)  "INANES" AND
"INSANES" HERE

WSJ OPINION

By Rod Hunter, adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute, former senior
director responsible for trade at National Security Council in the Bush
administration.

"Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both claim to be ready to be president
on "day one." But on the campaign trail, both are pandering to organized
labor and other antitrade activists on the left.

It is tempting to dismiss this as empty posturing -- important for
electioneering but likely to be forgotten after November. But words matter.
If one of the Democrats wins the White House, he or she may find that the
antitrade tirades delivered carelessly this year will, by next, have
unleashed protectionist forces not easily controlled.

Mrs. Clinton is distancing herself from and even dismissing her husband's
trade legacy, which includes enacting the North America Free Trade Agreement
(Nafta), creating the World Trade Organization (WTO), and negotiating
China's admission into it. She is now calling for a "time out" from any new
trade pacts. Mr. Obama, unburdened by a record to defend, blames Nafta for
shipping jobs abroad and "forc[ing] parents to compete with teenagers for
minimum wage jobs at Wal-Mart." He wants to renegotiate Nafta.

It is true that there is a lot of churning as jobs are destroyed, but even
more are created as firms enter, exit or are resized in a dynamic economy.
Back in 2004, Ben Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve governor, looked at
Bureau of Labor Statistics data stretching back a decade and pointed out
that about 15 million jobs were lost and 17 million created each year -- an
annual net creation of nearly two million jobs. What's more, only about 2.5%
of the jobs lost were a result of import competition. The vast majority of
jobs lost were caused by changes in consumer tastes, domestic competition,
and technology.

It is also true that U.S. manufacturing has been shedding jobs since the
late 1970s, with workers increasingly moving into services. But we have seen
this process before. In 1900, it took about 40% of the American workforce
toiling on the farm to feed the country. Today, thanks to farm
mechanization, agricultural chemistry and other innovations, a mere 2.5% of
the workforce feeds the nation and exports about third of U.S. farm
production.

Trade is not the threat Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama allege. It is a central
reason why American workers are among the world's most productive and
prosperous. An economy open to trade is also an economy free enough to
thrive in a changing world.

The U.S. doesn't need a Clintonian trade "time out." It needs to continue
expanding opportunities for American workers by doing such things as
completing the Doha trade talks, which are bogged down largely over
agriculture. Such negotiations are always difficult, and the easier parts of
trade liberalization, such as early tariff cuts for manufactured goods, are
already in place. Today the WTO has 151 member nations and any one them can
block a new trade agreement. Yet a new agreement is possible, and could
promote growth in developing countries and expand opportunities for
Americans in manufacturing, farming and services, where the U.S. enjoys a
competitive advantage.

Trade agreements are also important for non-economic reasons, because they
have foreign policy implications. Take South Korea, a longstanding ally in
Asia. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama oppose ratifying a trade deal with
Seoul. But failing to do so would send a troubling signal -- that the U.S.
is uninterested in supporting an ally at a time when our friends in the
region are worried about an ascendant China.

Or take Colombia, a vital U.S. ally in Latin America. Mrs. Clinton opposes,
and Mr. Obama has declined to embrace, a trade deal with Bogotá. Colombia is
a stalwart ally in the drug war and essential to neutralizing Hugo Chávez's
Venezuela. Nafta helped spur economic reform, private-sector growth and
political stability in Mexico. A trade deal with Colombia could work similar
magic in a country where it is desperately needed.

While Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are wrong on the economics and cavalier on
foreign policy, they are tapping into popular anxiety about the economy.
Rather than trying to shut the world out, however, the next administration
needs to pursue the domestic reforms necessary to ensure that American
workers can thrive in the knowledge economy. These include shoring up our
education system, clearing obstacles to worker mobility by making health
care and pensions portable, and replacing the hodgepodge of displaced-worker
assistance programs with a single support, training and relocation system.
The American worker, not the job, is the national asset.
*****
And routinely, dem dim Dems are a national liability.

Dennis

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