Following Up: Time for a “Truth in Testimony Act” for Think Tanks

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business, civil society groups, Congress, corporations, data, exports, Following Up, globalization, idea laundering, imports, Jobs, labor unions, offshoring, statistics, think tanks, Trade, trade balances, transparency

So far, my work on the problems for our democracy caused by corporate- or other special interest-funded think tanks has emphasized that the media has a special responsibility – and ability — to help solve them. How? By making sure that whenever they quote staffers from these organizations as experts on this or that issue, they reveal who’s signing the tankers’ paychecks.

But another major segment of society also needs to play a role in preventing what I call think tank idea-laundering – posing as objective, academicky-type organizations in order to portray their staffs’ findings as the products of disinterested scholarly research rather than exercises in agenda-pushing. That segment is government.

Legislatures at the local, state, and federal levels should pass what might be called “Truth in Testifying Acts.” That is, whenever they invite input from think tanks in hearings they hold, or in public comment exercises they conduct, the law-making bodies should require these organizations to disclose all their funders with a financial stake in the subject being examined, or the decision that’s pending. As a result, the public or any other consumers of these analyses would have the information they need to judge how much credibility they feel the information deserves, and what kind of material has been deliberately exaggerated or spotlighted or downplayed or ignored altogether.

In fact, these requirements should be imposed on so-called civil society groups, foundations, labor unions, academic institutions, and business organizations, too. Sometimes their biases are obvious from their names, but only sometimes. Best to err therefore on the side of caution – and more disclosure.

Further, while we’re on the subject, I’d like to see something else added to these Truth in Testimony Acts, or follow-on legislation, which is especially relevant to the trade issues I follow so closely: requirements that business groups and their think tank fronts lay out comprehensively their own domestic and international operations and structures, and those of their major funders. They’re needed because representatives of these organizations have long gotten away with literal intellectual murder by presenting legislators with shamelessly cherry-picked data.

For example, when trade agreements and other trade policy decisions are being examined, it’s become standard operating procedure for witnesses in favor of greater liberalization to present figures on exports from the country as a whole, from individual states or Congressional districts (always of major concern to Senators and House members), or from whatever company or industry they represent. And typically, they’re allowed to ignore the import and trade balance sides of the equation. Talk about a total crock.

Similarly, these individuals and organizations are happy to report on how many workers they employ nationally, and in various states and localities, and how many of these jobs depend on exports at a given moment. But they have no interest in discussing how these trends have changed over time, or how many jobs and how much production they’ve sent overseas or have lost to imports, or how these situations have evolved, say, over the life of a certain trade deal.

The companies and industries justify this selectivity by contending that information on imports and offshoring is proprietary, and that keeping it confidential is crucial to their commercial success. That’s often true. But the Truth in Testimony Act should specify that if witnesses wish to keep close to their vest information on one side of the trade ledger (e.g., their firm’s imports), then they can’t brag about their performance on the other side (e.g., their firm’s exports). There’s simply no reason to allow these businesses to play, “Heads, We Win; Tails, You Lose.”

Nor need there be anything the slightest bit coercive about such requirements. If businesses and industries and their various representatives feel so strongly about the secrets to their success, they should be free to decline invites to appear before lawmakers.

Actually, I’d like to extend these requirements to the financial statements public companies need to file with the feds. As with their testimony, such businesses often include flattering trade-related information in quarterly and annual financial statements. If they’re not willing to give investors the full picture, they should need to drop the whole subject.

And why restrict such disclosures to public businesses? Companies of all kinds are required to report all sorts of information to Washington. Their submissions form the basis of much of the economic data that is made publicly available by the federal government. The shield of anonymity provided by the Census Bureau and other statistical agencies to prevent rivals from using the data to gain advantage is entirely reasonable from the standpoint of these businesses. But from a national standpoint, it makes no sense at all. Indeed, it puts policymakers and the public in the position of flying largely blind when it comes to evaluating the impact of trade policy decisions.

The same kind of problem is created by the narrow range of trade-related info that businesses are legally obligated to share. Why not force them to specify their job and production offshoring, the wages of their U.S. and overseas workers, their foreign and domestic procurement, the foreign and domestic content of their products, and similar statistics? And why not demand time series, so that long-term patterns can be identified?  BTW — content information has been required of auto-makers selling in the United States since the 1990s, so major precedent exists. 

The business secrets problem is easily solved: If all firms wishing the privilege of operating in the United States need to share the same information, no one company is put behind the eight-ball. And again, no coercion is involved. Companies would be perfectly free not to comply – and exit the world’s most lucrative market by far in the process. And what about the regulatory burden that would be placed on smaller firms? There’s a strong argument for exempting them, as larger firms dominate U.S. trade flows anyway.

Such a sweeping “Truth in Globalization Act” would probably be a heavier legislative lift than the “Truth in Testimony Act,” so I’d focus first on the former. But both are urgently needed to ensure the soundest possible U.S. policymaking process.  And how could anyone genuinely devoted to the national interest object?  

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Im-Politic: Did Trump (and Trump-ism) Really Lose Big in the Healthcare Fight?

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border adjustment tax, Congress, conservatives, Freedom Caucus, healthcare, Im-Politic, Immigration, infrastructure, Obama, Obamacare, Paul Ryan, Peggy Noonan, Republicans, RyanCare, tax reform, Tea Party, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump

The list of realities, considerations, factors – call them what you will – that President Trump either forgot or overlooked as he pushed for House passage of the Republican healthcare bill is long, impressive, and pretty obvious according to the Washington, D.C. conventional political wisdom. On the off chance you haven’t heard it or read it, it includes the difference between cutting deals among real estate tycoons and negotiating with ideological politicians; his own voters’ tendency to rely heavily on the kind of government healthcare aid that the GOP legislation either eliminated or sharply curbed; the powerful vested stake developed after years or working with it in the current healthcare system – however troubled it might be – by major participants in the system; and the dangers to Mr. Trump’s own credibility and political power of choosing to tackle first a highly contentious subject (like healthcare) instead of a priority that’s reasonably uncontroversial (like infrastructure spending).

All those points seem valid to me, but I would add two more that seem at least equally important. Then I’ll present an interpretation of the healthcare story that hasn’t appeared anywhere else yet but that shouldn’t be overlooked – if only because it ties the otherwise puzzling story together in ways that are admittedly byzantine, but that make eminent sense in a Machiavellian (and therefore quintessentially political) way. In fact, this analysis dovetails exceptionally well with the president’s clear (to me, certainly) determination to remake American politics by rejecting the doctrinaire conservatism embodied by the Republican party for decades, and thereby increasing its appeal to independents and moderates.

The first such consideration that should be added to the overlooked list: how much more difficult it is both politically and substantively to take away government assistance used by economically stressed Americans (like those who backed Trump in droves) than it is to enable them to thrive without the assistance via other major planks of the Trump platform – chiefly immigration and trade policy overhaul.

One of the secrets of Trump’s success, after all, was his recognition that vast numbers of working and middle class Americans no longer buy the mainstream Republican argument that they could greatly increase their economic self-reliance through the wealth that would trickle down to them through shrinking taxes and government. He understood that this promise would always ring false as long as so many good jobs and so much income were being sent to foreigners through offshoring-friendly trade policies and mass immigration.

So it’s easy to understand why the Republican healthcare legislation registered so little support from even Republican voters – no doubt including many Trump backers. He seemed to be putting the cart before the horse not when it came to the kinds of government programs touted by liberals that Trump-ites viewed as bupkis, but with a program that had become central to their lives. (For a terrific analysis of Main Street views of healthcare at the usually ignored gut level, see this column by The Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan.)

The second neglected consideration flows directly from the first: President Trump’s election shows that the Republican party has moved significantly in his more populist and particularly less ideological direction, if not at the interlocking think tank/donors/Congressional level, at the far more important voter level. As a result, there was no apparent reason for Mr. Trump to defer to the more ideological Congressional Republicans on the healthcare front.

More specifically, even though the national party’s leadership did indeed treat Obamacare repeal and replacement as a defining principle and promise to its grassroots, and even though candidate Trump expressed strong opposition to his predecessors’ signature achievement, healthcare was never the defining principle of the maverick movement he led. That’s why he so frequently spoke of achieving healthcare goals that have been so widely rejected in Republican and conservative and leadership circles, like ensuring universal coverage.

So why did the president lead off his legislative agenda with orthodox Republican-style healthcare reform? Here’s where the story gets Machiavellian to me – but in ways that should be entirely plausible to anyone familiar with how successful political strategists think. Further, it’s a narrative that fully takes into account the hyper-partisan nature of Washington and legislative politics with which Mr. Trump needs to deal. And it goes like this.

The president recognizes that even though he’s remade much of the Republican base in his own image on the issues level, he also must realize that the Washington Republicans – which include the party’s mainstream conservative Congressional leaders and its more ideological Tea Party wing – remain hostile on the highest profile matters on his own agenda. I imagine he also recognizes that they might be powerful enough to undermine his initiatives on trade, immigration, and/or infrastructure – especially if Democratic leaders remain in their adamant “resistance” mode.

For even if Democrats are ultimately winnable on trade and infrastructure, they have no interest even in these areas in giving the president the kind of quick victory that would greatly strengthen the odds of turning his first term of office into a success that would boost the odds of his reelection. They have even less interest in helping Mr. Trump further strengthen his appeal to many of big Democratic constituencies.

So the Washington Republicans needed to be at least neutralized – and sooner rather than later. And appearing to fight the good fight for their healthcare reform proposal was an ideal way to demonstrate his loyalty to their objectives and strengthen his case for demanding concessions from them in return in areas he valued much more highly. This calculation looks especially shrewd since the Republican bill was so draconian that even had it squeezed through the House, the Senate was bound to prevent its reaching his desk in anything like its current form.

As a result, now that the “RyanCare” legislation is dead, Mr. Trump can say to both the House Republican leaders and even to the hard-line Freedom Caucus something to the effect, “We tried it your way, I carried lots of your water, and I paid a noticeable price. Now we drop the healthcare effort, pivot to my priorities, and I expect your votes, even if you won’t pull front-line duty. And when we do address healthcare as Obamacare’s failures multiply, you’re going to do right by your own constituents and drop the free market extremism. P.S. Anyone remaining obstructionist comes into my social media cross-hairs with your reelection bids coming up.”

I have no inside information here, and my reasoning could certainly be too clever by half. Moreover, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my professional life is that just because an analysis seems logical or commonsensical, doesn’t mean that it’s true. But even though it’s only about a day since the healthcare bill was pulled from a scheduled floor vote for the second and final time, I derive some satisfaction in seeing the president is making nice with both House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Freedom Caucus members, and making clear that it’s tax reform time (which could bring a tariff-like border adjustment tax). Which could mean that Donald Trump’s presidency is highly conventional in at least one respect – temptations to dismiss it as a failure should be strongly resisted.  

Im-Politic: Is the Open Borders Crowd Signaling ‘Criminals First’ Priorities?

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border security, Congress, Constitution, crime, Democrats, Department of Homeland Security, equal protection, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Joint Address, Open Borders, Trump, VOICE

Democrats in Congress, many of whom apparently never read the Obamacare legislation before they passed it, seem to be similarly out to lunch on another critical issue – illegal immigration. That’s a charitable explanation for why they so conspicuously groaned last night during the president’s address to lawmakers when Mr. Trump spoke of directing “the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims. The office is called VOICE — Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests.”

The concern both in and out of Congress is that the administration plans to spotlight crimes committed by all non-native born Americans – and maybe even turn these misdeeds into law enforcement priorities. That would of course be completely unacceptable, since the Constitution grants everyone on American territory, including illegal immigrants, equal protection under the law.

But the Trump-haters on Capitol Hill, and elsewhere, evidently stopped listening at that point. For immediately afterwards, President Trump made clear that he was talking about crimes committed by illegal aliens. The next four paragraphs of his speech singled out family members of Americans killed by immigrants who were not only undocumented (as the favored euphemism calls them) but who had major prior criminal records.     

Even worse, the boo-birds have ignored the statement of administration policy that makes the focus on criminal illegal aliens crystal clear. Which was issued five weeks ago. In a January 25 Executive Order, Mr. Trump has mandated creation of “an office to provide proactive, timely, adequate, and professional services to victims of crimes committed by removable aliens and the family members of such victims. This office shall provide quarterly reports studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States.”

In other words, if you’re not a criminal who’s in the country illegally (and therefore “removable”), you have nothing to fear from this new initiative. Conversely, if you’re a criminal but you’re a legal resident – native-born or not – you have nothing to fear, either. You don’t even have a problem if you’re an illegal immigrant but not a criminal.  Special treatment is to be reserved only for criminals whose illegal presence in the United States clearly signals a shameful failure to enforce federal immigration law with even minimal concern for the well-being not only of citizens, but of all law-abiding residents, including the foreign-born.         

Before his speech, the president told reporters, “The time is right for an immigration bill if both sides are willing to compromise.” That will be hard to believe if the Open Borders crowd keeps categorically – and even self-righteously — insisting on what looks like a Criminals First immigration policy.    

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Multinationals Debunk a Major Free Trade Claim

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2016 election, BAT, border adjustment tax, Congress, exports, free trade, GE, General Electric, House of Representatives, imports, Jeffrey Immelt, Kevin Brady, multinational companies, Paul Ryan, Republicans, retailers, tariffs, tax reform, Trade, Trump, value-added tax, VAT, {What's Left of) Our Economy

President Trump has been slow so far to launch the major trade policy transformation he promised during his campaign – in part because most of his trade policy team has taken so long to be confirmed by Congress, and in part because (especially in the case of Japan), he seems so far to be listening too closely to national security advisers who clearly prioritize alliance relationships over economics. But his election has already triggered major upheaval in America’s trade politics, and in the process fatally weakened one of the leading arguments advanced against curbing imports.

The trade politics earthquake has three major related sources. First, Republican Congressional leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan and especially Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady, who have long strongly supported jobs-killing trade deals and related policies, have become major champions of a measure that would create one of the biggest trade barriers in American history – the so-called Border Adjustment Tax (BAT). Their proposal, which is part of the House Republicans’ larger tax reform package, would offset the discriminatory effects of foreign value-added taxes (VATs) by imposing levies on imports – as well as by supporting exports by exempting them from taxes.

Their change of heart in turn surely stems at least partly from the second big change in trade politics – a major shift among Republican voters on trade policy. As I’ve reported previously, whereas for decades, they tended to support freer trade, and the policies that have ostensibly sought to further liberalize global commerce, more recent polls show that the GOP base has turned against the idea. (Democrats, however, have become much more positive on trade’s impact on the American economy.) And the evidence goes far beyond polls – as made clear by Mr. Trump’s capture of the GOP presidential nomination over numerous free-trading rivals and his November triumph.

But it’s the final trade politics shift that has really floored me. Many of the big multinational manufacturing companies that have also strongly pushed for those same deficit-boosting trade deals – because they made it easier to source products from abroad and supply the U.S. market from foreign production sites – support the BAT, too. In fact, they’ve created a lobbying coalition to turn the idea into law.

And it’s their BAT stance that has weakened a longstanding pillar of free-trade thinking: the insistence that any sweeping tariff measures (like the BAT) would actually backfire on domestic U.S. manufacturers and other producers by raising the cost of imported inputs they use – like parts, components, and materials. Here’s the latest example of this claim – from a former bigwig at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, no less.

I’ve presented the evidence revealing that this argument completely ignores the immense existing scale of American inputs manufacturing – and the huge markets, new growth, and jobs gains that would result by replacing foreign-made goods with these U.S.-made products. But at least as important is how the multinational practitioners themselves are refuting the theorists by endorsing the BAT.

Incidentally, the multinationals’ BAT position could indicate that I’ve been wrong about their trade performance and about the principal rationale for their backing of offshoring-friendly trade agreements – data I’ve seen showing that they import much more than they export. For if they were indeed big contributors to America’s trade deficits (that is, big net importers), then you’d think they’d be much more concerned about potentially more expensive imports than about any export boost possible from the BAT. The companies themselves, as I’ve repeatedly stated, know the definitive answer – at least regarding their own trade performance. But as long as they’re not required to disclose their import and export figures – as opposed to releasing cherry-picked numbers – we can’t be sure.

But this business enthusiasm for the BAT could also stem from an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality – as General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt has signaled. In other words, perhaps they’ve decided that more localized production everywhere is an irresistible wave of the future – at least for the time being. Alternatively, the multinationals could believe that they themselves could enter the aforementioned new BAT-created domestic input manufacturing markets. If these businesses believe that the rest of that tax reform package along with the regulatory relief President Trump has promised will lower domestic American business costs further, domestic sourcing could become all the more attractive. Another possibility – precisely because America’s and their own export performance has been so relatively weak, they view foreign markets as an especially exciting growth opportunity that the BAT tax breaks could open wide. And the likeliest possibility? The answer for most of these companies is a mix of some or all of the above.

What is certain, however, is that we’re now hearing, “No thanks” from the companies that economists keep telling us are among the biggest beneficiaries of cheap imports furnished by wide open trade policies. Of course, the retailers – which relay so heavily for their profits on cheap consumer goods imports – are campaigning just as hard against the BAT. The plan’s verdict will speak volumes about whether Americans, and their political system, assign more value to making stuff or to buying it.

Following Up: That Latest (Disgraceful) Court Decision on Trump’s Immigration Order

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Congress, Constitution, due process, Elena Kagan, executive order, Following Up, Immigration, Muslim ban, national security, presidency, refugees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Supreme Court, terrorism, travel ban, Trump, U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit, visas, Washington State

The decision last Thursday by a federal appeals court to uphold blockage of President Trump’s recent Executive Order on immigration and refugee policy exemplified the challenge I noted when I started blogging here at RealityChek: “So much nonsense out there, so little time….” Just as I often struggle each day to decide which outrage in the public policy world against fact-based, adult thinking should be addressed, I’ve struggled to decide which sad excuses for a legal argument made by three appellate judges in the Ninth Circuit to focus on in this post.

But two groups of contentions stand out as especially dangerous and disingenuous. Both decisively influenced the judges’ determination to keep the Executive Order from being enforced on procedural grounds pending a further judicial decision on the merits of the case.

The first is the panel’s unanimous ruling on how much due process to protect Constitutionally guaranteed rights is legally deserved by foreigners outside America’s borders who have not been awarded legal resident status. That is, how many boxes do the relevant U.S. officials need to check in order to reach a legally valid decision to deny a refugee applicant admission? In these refugee cases, the Supreme Court has held that the only such obligation is providing a “facially legitimate and bona fide” reason for a judgment reached by a State Department consular officer.

The Ninth Circuit panel, however, claims that this standard (and the already established appeals process) is insufficient when refugee applicants “have a relationship with a U.S. resident or an institution that might have rights of its own to assert.” And it has ruled that the Trump Executive Order failed to meet this standard.

Even leaving aside the convincing argument that existing law denies judges jurisdiction over immigration policy (which the panel rejected in a “preliminary” sense), just consider the precedent this conclusion would set. It would mean that unless a terrorist connection could be proved conclusively, a suspected ISIS fighter or adherent who applies for refugee or other immigration status from Iraq or Yemen or wherever could be entitled to enter the United States if he or she was a relative of a non-citizen legal U.S. resident. What would conclusive proof be? Heaven knows, since the case referenced by the Ninth Circuit panel only alleged that the rejection in question wasn’t sufficiently “detailed.” And who would decide how much detail is enough? Perhaps a U.S. court? Perhaps after looking over intelligence findings that are often unavoidably judgment calls? It’s hard to imagine a better way to start turning making a sieve of screening procedures vital in an age of transnational terrorism for protecting national security.

Think I’m kidding? Here are the actual circumstances of the immigration denial decision that the Ninth Circuit apparently finds so objectionable (and which was upheld in 2014 by the Supreme Court): An Afghan-born legal resident of the United States petitioned for her husband’s entry from Afghanistan, and asserted he deserved “priority (and judicially reviewable) status” like other “immediate relatives.”

And the basis for her claim that this application was unjustly turned down – i.e., that her petition was denied due process because the rationale wasn’t sufficiently detailed? A consular official told her husband that he would be kept out of America because by his own admission, he had been an official in Afghanistan’s former Taliban government, and that U.S. law aims to exclude foreigners who have engaged in “terrorist activities” – a description that certainly applies to the Taliban.

It gets better: The federal court that did decide that a former admitted Taliban official’s application deserved (unspecified) further consideration, which resulted in the case being appealed to the Supreme Court? It was the Ninth Circuit. And four Supreme Court Justices (Stephen Breyer, who wrote a dissent, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, who joined with him) agreed.

The second especially disturbing aspect of the appellate court’s decision was the panel’s claim that it had, in accordance with “an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence,” paid “substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations of the political branches” – that is, the presidency and the Congress. The only such deference apparent in this decision is at the level of brazen tokenism.

Specifically, the three judges claimed to agree that “the Government’s interest in combating terrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order.” But they also stated that the judiciary has a responsibility to balance this interest with other legitimate considerations, namely the public’s interest in “free flow of travel, in avoiding separation of families, and in freedom from discrimination.”

The “freedom from discrimination” threat of course pertains to repeated charges – also made in court by plaintiff Washington State – that the Executive Order’s refugee provisions create a “Muslim ban.” The Order’s failure to include most countries with Muslim majorities renders that charge inexplicable. Moreover, as my previous post observed, religious persecution is one of the forms of persecution that must be demonstrated by successful refugee applicants. But what’s simply jaw-dropping is the nature of the specific balancing act the appellate court identified involving national security concerns on the one hand, and freedom of travel and keeping families together on the other.

Because here’s what the three-judge panel asserted could nullify national security judgments made by the president and Congress (in the 2015 law identifying the seven countries subjected to the travel ban as “countries of concern” requiring special screening). And P.S.: It’s also what the judges agreed (in line with claims by Washington State and Minnesota) constituted enough “damage” to the State’s “economy and public universities” even to rise to the level of adjudicability in the context of immigration policy:

>”two visiting scholars who had planned to spend time at Washington State University were not permitted to enter the United States”:

>”three prospective employees from countries covered by the Executive Order for visas [for whom the University of Washington] had made plans [to arrive] beginning in February 2017”;

>”two medicine and science interns who have been prevented by the Executive Order from coming to the University of Washington”; and

>”an unspecified number of “students and faculty at Minnesota’s public universities [who] were similarly restricted from traveling for academic and personal reasons.”

If this is a balancing act, it’s one with a heavy Ninth Circuit thumb giving critical mass to laughably marginal considerations – even assuming that any of these temporarily inconvenienced students and teachers have any preexisting right to crossing American borders.

It’s true that lawyers and judges often insist that “no issue is decided finally until it is decided correctly.” But the Trump Executive Order’s treatment so far in the judiciary, and the current make-up of the Supreme Court, tell me that national security could suffer greatly until this result is finally reached.

Im-Politic: It Was Trump – and Nationalism – That Killed TPP for Good

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Campaign for America's Future, Congress, Democrats, fast track, free trade agreements, Im-Politic, Jobs, Lori Wallach, manufacturing, nationalism, progressives, protectionism, Public Citizen, Republicans, Tobita Chow, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump

However understandably it’s been overshadowed by the earthquake election of 2016, the demise of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (TPP) is a very big, indeed historic, deal. Think of it this way: Do you know how many times since 1950 that a trade agreement concluded by an American administration has been turned back by public opposition? Try “none.”

As a result, it’s vital that trade policy critics correctly understand the ingredients of this victory – if only because they’ll decisively influence the nature of alternative approaches able to pass public and legislative muster. And in this vein, it’s becoming apparent that left-of-center trade activists – who deserve most of the credit for organizing impressive campaigns of opposition to U.S. trade policy since the NAFTA fight of the early 1990s – have especially important lessons to learn. The biggest ones: first, that Donald Trump’s election as president delivered the coup de grace against TPP; and second, and that his fundamentally nationalist arguments made the trade critics’ movement genuinely, and victoriously, bipartisan.

Just to review the history briefly, in 1950, President Truman decided that his plans to create a global trade body with strong enforcement powers were going nowhere, and so the White House announced in December that legislation to approve the globally endorse International Trade Organization would not be put before Congress.

Over the following six and a half decades, Congress did formally or informally rebuff three presidential requests to renew the executive’s trade negotiating authority in conjunction with expedited “fast track” voting procedures. But when actual trade deals came before the House and Senate, all of them passed. Not even the financial crisis and Great Recession were able to generate winning coalitions against new trade agreements, as lawmakers approved deals with Colombia, Korea, and Panama in October, 2011, when the current (historically weak) recovery was still in a relatively early and not especially strong stage.

During all of these trade battles, left-of-center forces such as labor unions and environmental groups provided most of the opposition’s political and financial muscle, its lobbying strength on Capitol Hill, and its grass roots organizing. And considering how tremendously outspent these groups were by Big Business (including Wall Street), and how vigorously the national media tried to marginalize them, these groups performed heroically.

Both President-elect Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton ran deeply divisive campaigns. And Mr. Trump’s displayed a clear penchant for assailing numerous liberal social and cultural sacred cows. So it wasn’t entirely surprising that trade critics on the left consistently tried to minimize the overlap between their positions on globalization and those of the GOP candidate. Much more surprising, and less defensible, is how this practice has continued and even intensified since the Trump victory.

The most egregious example seems to have come from Tobita Chow, who heads a Chicago-based political organization called The People’s Lobby and, more important, just wrote on the president-elect and trade for the nationally influential Campaign for America’s Future. According to Chow, although Mr. Trump opposed TPP, he “plans to pursue bilateral trade deals with a number of Asian countries, including with Vietnam, which is also part of the TPP. Expect Trump’s trade deals to be even more damaging for people in the US and abroad than the TPP would be.”

Working a different but related angle, Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach claims that although President Obama’s continuing push for the TPP “helped to elect Donald Trump…Trump himself did not derail the TPP – people power united across borders accomplished that first by delaying the TPP’s completion beyond its 2012 deadline and then by ensuring that a majority in Congress could never be built to implement the deal since it was signed 10 months ago.

“By declaring he will formally bury the zombie TPP, the president-elect is merely acknowledging the obvious: The deal died under the weight of its own terms and could not achieve sufficient support in Congress.“

If Chow is indeed speaking for much of the progressive community, then he’s vividly demonstrated that this faction has become just as oblivious to the concerns of working class Americans as the corporate-funded Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. Here’s why he has such a beef with the President-elect on trade. As he explains it, Mr. Trump’s fundamental mistake is basing his approach to trade

“on his nationalistic politics. Trump has promised to step in and stop competition across borders, and to defend ‘real Americans’ against the immigrants and foreigners whom are too often perceived as threats to their livelihood and their way of life. And in trade policy, Trump is a protectionist. The very name, ‘protectionism’, implies that jobs and investment in other countries are threats, and that we can and should ‘protect’ the American economy against these threats. A protectionist like Trump would have us believe that if we throw up trade barriers and stop investment in foreign countries and force goods to be made in the US, then we can ‘bring back’ jobs and factories from China and Mexico and return to the middle-class economy that flourished between WWII and the 1970s. This is what is captured in Trump’s slogan, ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Chow goes on to sound like a charter member of the nation’s offshoring lobby, or a Mainstream Media columnist, by insisting that

“[T]he slogan is a lie. You can’t ‘bring back’ jobs that don’t exist anymore. Manufacturing jobs are on the decline around the world–including in China. Economist Joseph Stiglitz sums it up: ‘Global employment in manufacturing is going down because productivity increases are exceeding increases in demand for manufactured products by a significant amount.’”

As I’ve written previously, countries much less important economically than the United States has long used their market power to influence multinational companies’ investment decisions and the contours of their supply chains to lure investment – and jobs – to their economies. Why does Chow believe that similar U.S. efforts are bound to fail?

I have other substantive issues with his arguments, but more important is Chow’s conclusion that what Americans should back instead is

“what is sometimes called progressive nationalism: an agenda to pursue a progressive agenda across borders to create a more just and sustainable global society. And since, as progressives, we understand that the labor movement is central to all our struggles, this means that a core goal of progressive internationalism must be to increase the power and status of workers internationally.”

Does he really believe that this will be a winning message in American politics for the foreseeable future? Is there any evidence that the working class that rallied behind Mr. Trump (including many union households) would respond favorably? And if so, what does Chow believe has changed over the last quarter century? After all, progressives have made these points at every opportunity during that period’s trade battles. They never galvanized enough voters to win.

Which brings us to the main weakness of Wallach’s case. She’s right about “people power united across borders” delaying TPP’s conclusion and ratification – and about the importance of buying such time. But ultimately the deal was signed by all the countries involved, and most prospective TPP members with reasonably democratic systems made clear that the U.S. Congress’ ratification was crucial to bringing the treaty across their own various finish lines. The reason was obvious: America’s market would have represented nearly two-thirds of the final free trade zone.

Now ask yourself about TPP’s fate had Clinton won her expected victory this year. Can anyone seriously doubt that she would have pushed for a few cosmetic changes and then worked with pro-TPP Republican Congressional leaders to win a final passage sometime early in her first term that mirrored President Obama’s fast track triumph last year? In fact, as Wallach repeatedly warned before Election Day, when Mr. Trump seemed dead and buried and Clinton seemed sure to win the White House, a TPP vote during a lame duck session of Congress was entirely possible.

Mr. Trump’s election was the event that finished off the treaty for good – both because of his own opposition and because of the shock effect of his upset victory, which revealed that a substantially transformed Republican party electorate wasn’t about to take its cues on trade anymore from the likes of offshoring lobby hired guns like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In other words, President-elect Trump’s successful conversion of a critical mass of Republicans into energized trade policy critics who actually voted their convictions was what turned the opposition led for so long by the progressives into a truly bipartisan – and therefore winning – movement.

As a result, progressives face a major choice. They can ensure a more lasting defeat for job- and growth-killing trade deals – and lay the foundations for realistic plans to promote greater prosperity outside the United States, too – by acknowledging the political and substantive merits of more nationalistic American trade policies. Or they can keep inveighing against the President-elect and his approach, or provide at best niggardly support, and boost the odds that a genuine revolution in the politics of trade in the United States fizzles out.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Signs that Chinese Currency Manipulation is Back

Tags

China, Congress, currency, currency manipulation, exchange rates, Obama, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, yuan, {What's Left of) Our Economy

For several years, China has been the gift that has kept on giving to cheerleaders for current American trade policies, as its currency policies allowed President Obama and his trade supporters to all but declare “mission accomplished” for the decision to address Beijing’s predatory approach to globalization through quiet diplomacy, not punitive tariffs.

Now after letting its currency strengthen versus the U.S. dollar, Beijing, is permitting the tightly controlled yuan weaken once again. So as during most of the previous decade, Chinese goods are once again getting major price advantages over competing products in all global markets for reasons having nothing to do with free markets or free trade. Let’s see if Mr. Obama and his backers will be as quick to admit failure as they were to claim success.

China’s currency policies have had their ups and downs for the last 15 years or so, and throughout the cheerleaders consistently have mis-represented the idea of proper currency valuation. Moreover, some impressive evidence indicates that the yuan has been much more undervalued – and therefore distorting trade flows – to a much greater extent than the standard exchange rate figures (from the Federal Reserve) show.

Nonetheless, it’s still important to note that those standard figures have reported a 20.39 percent increase in the yuan’s value against the dollar since July, 2005. It’s just as important to note that, during this period, the dollar is up versus a broad Fed measure of world currencies by about 7.70 percent, so by this key measure, China has been a big outlier in ways that work to its disadvantage.

And even though the yuan has fallen in value since it hit its peak versus the dollar, in mid-January, 2014, it’s fallen much less than that basket of other currencies – 8.63 percent for the yuan, as of the Federal Reserve’s latest (May 27) figures, versus 19.04 percent.

But the key baseline date Washington and everyone else should be looking at is last August 11. That’s the day the Chinese government clearly decided it had had enough of a stronger yuan, and devalued the currency by a stunning 1.83 percent in one day. And from last August 10 though May 27, the yuan has dropped by 5.67 percent versus the dollar. But that group of major currencies is down only 2.86 percent against the greenback. Moreover, since May 27, the yuan has been permitted to sink another 0.42 percent. (I couldn’t find a comparably recent number for that broad dollar index.)

With the American economy still mired in an historically sluggish recovery, and manufacturing output still faltering, expect all the remaining presidential candidates to start decrying Chinese currency manipulation again. If it continues, Beijing’s apparent gambit could also further diminish the chances that Congress will approve Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, since a U.S. failure to respond adequately coupled with the deal’s own lack of currency disciplines with teeth would arguably turn Congressional approval into a green light for other would-be foreign manipulators. Pity the lawmaker who’d have to answer for that vote.

Im-Politic: America’s Trade Revolt Now Looks Even Stronger Than You Think

Tags

2016 election, Bernie Sanders, Congress, Donald Trump, House of Representatives, Im-Politic, Jobs, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, polls, public opinion, Trade

Last June, I wrote that, although public opinion polls on trade policy were yielding results that are all over the place, one body of evidence was pointing strongly to mounting voter opposition to Washington’s longstanding – and largely bipartisan – globalization strategy: The number of presidential candidates trying to make hay of the issue. Now a new study is supporting some of that hypothesis, – and in the process indicates that pollsters genuinely need to get their trade act together.

The authors are essentially the same Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team that conducted some of the most influential research on trade’s economic impact of recent years. Its February report found that the damage to American employment and wages resulting from dramatic post-2001 U.S. trade expansion with China has been much greater and longer-lasting than economic theory would have predicted.

This week, these scholars are telling us that damage from import competition has contributed significantly to the popularity of White House hopefuls like Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders. Moreover, the impact – which they contend dates to the beginning of the last decade – has been more pronounced among Republicans.

These conclusions are based on an examination of the district-by-district outcomes of the House of Representatives races in the 2002 and 2010 off-year elections. As the authors put it:

“[W]e find strong evidence that congressional districts exposed to larger increases in import competition disproportionately removed moderate representatives from office in the 2000s. Trade-exposed districts initially in Republican hands become substantially more likely to elect a conservative Republican, while trade-exposed districts initially in Democratic hands become more likely to elect either a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican.”

If they’re confirmed by follow-on research, these MIT results will matter because they’d represent the first robust findings that trade issues have exerted major effects on national politics. It’s true that trade issues have become much more controversial nation-wide since a raucous debate broke out in the early 1990s over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It’s also true that, over that last quarter century, trade-related job loss in particular has impacted a handful of House and Senate races in unusually hard hit districts or states.

But it’s true as well that to date there’s been no reason to believe that opposition to or skepticism about trade deals and trade policies has significantly influenced the make up of the House or Senate, the presidential choices of the two major parties, or the final White House verdicts in November.

In fact, when’s the last time you can remember a Democratic or Republican presidential nominee running hard and consistently against American trade policies? Or even any of the leading contenders for these nominations? And when it comes to Congress, the trade critics’ important legislative priorities have carried the day lately only twice – when Bill Clinton’s requests for fast track trade negotiating authority were rejected in 1997 and 1998, and when the authority itself was allowed to expire in 2007.

But although politicians as a group haven’t been acting as if trade issues mattered to their constituents, the new MIT study also suggests that they may not have had the chance to examine much useful, accurate evidence. One of the authors told a New York Times reporter that “In retrospect, whether it’s Trump or Sanders, we should have seen in it coming. ”

It’s likely that the polls have obscured their vision for three main reasons. First, the exit polls conducted after most elections simply haven’t asked voters about trade issues. Ditto for many polls about the state of the economy at any time. Second, polls that have focused on trade rarely gauge salience – i.e., how high respondents rank the issue on their list of major concerns. Third, as I’ve noted repeatedly, the trade questions that are posed by pollsters are often completely worthless. Sometimes the wording is flat-out biased, stacking the deck in favor of “pro-trade” responses. Indeed, it’s all too typical for surveys to present sharp black and white, yes or no choices that have little if anything to do with the real choices faced by policymakers or the public at any given time.

No realistic person expects polling to be an exact science. But the new MIT study combined with the way both students and practitioners of politics have been blindsided by the Trump and Sanders campaigns shows how urgently pollsters need to change their losing trade game. At this stage, even minimal confidence would be welcome.

Meanwhile, the study and the Trump-Sanders successes should be signaling to trade critics that their efforts have been bolstering the cause of trade realism, despite the imposing money and political power arrayed against them. Their next challenge is capitalizing on today’s momentum and turning it into enduring policy change.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Big Business Still Favors A TPP Fast Track – for Everyone Else

Tags

Business Roundtable, Congress, fast track, Michael Froman, National Foreign Trade Council, Obama, offshoring lobby, Orrin Hatch, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, TPA, TPP. Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, {What's Left of) Our Economy

A funny thing has happened to the Offshoring Lobby groups that pushed so hard (and successfully) for Congress to give President Obama fast track trade negotiating authority. Now that they’ve seen the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal whose passage they’ve also urged, several have decided they don’t like the core provision of fast track trade negotiating authority.

Central to the case for fast track – now officially known as Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – is that preventing Congress from monkeying around with the final text of trade agreements negotiated by presidents and their aides is vital to persuading America’s interlocutors to negotiate seriously. If American lawmakers could amend the deal at will, why would foreign leaders put forward their best offers, especially if they might anger powerful domestic constituencies?

That’s what U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has made unmistakably clear. In a late-2014 article in Foreign Affairs, Mr. Obama’s chief trade diplomat wrote, “By ensuring that Congress will consider trade agreements as they have been negotiated by the executive branch, TPA gives U.S. trading partners the necessary confidence to put their best and final offers on the table.”

The Republican leaders who have supported the president’s trade agenda agreed as well. According to Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch of Utah, TPA “allows for trade deals to be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote, an incentive for negotiating nations to put their best offer forward for any deal.” And before he was elected Speaker and chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan contended (in an article co-authored with Texas Republican Senator and current presidential candidate Ted Cruz, “By establishing TPA, Congress will send a signal to the world. America’s trading partners will know that the U.S. is trustworthy and then put their best offers on the table. America’s rivals will know that the U.S. is serious and won’t abandon the field.”

When Congress was considering fast track, moreover, leading business groups strongly echoed this line. As specified in a statement from the Trade Benefits America coalition that spearheaded the pro-fast track lobbying campaign, fast track historically ”has provided our trade negotiating partners with a degree of comfort that the United States is committed to the international trade negotiating process and the trade agreements we negotiate.”

One of the coalition’s major members, the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), was even more explicit: “Without U.S. trade negotiating authority, other countries will be unwilling to negotiate with the United States for fear that U.S. commitments and concessions would not hold weight.  In particular, they would be unwilling to put important politically sensitive concessions on the table.”

Last week, however, some of these organizations were changing their tune. In a statement calling for Congress to pass the TPP, the Business Roundtable declared that it also wanted to administration “to quickly address the remaining issues that impact certain business sectors in order to ensure the broadest possible benefits to all sectors of U.S. business, which will enable the broadest support possible for the TPP.” Huh? It’s true that Congress can attempt to clear up purported ambiguities in the text when it writes implementing legislation, but as for changing the text itself? Sorry, but that’s a no-no under TPA. Unless the Roundtable wants to reopen the entire negotiation?

Similarly, the NFTC reported that it is “encouraged by discussions that are underway between Congress and the Administration to address provisions in the agreement in order to further improve trade and investment liberalization, and strengthen the system of international trade and investment disciplines and procedures, including dispute settlement, for all of American business. Early resolution of areas for improvement identified by the business community will speed approval by Congress in 2016.”

With due respect, what on earth are they talking about other than the aforementioned clarifications and interpretations that unfortunately are entirely unilateral, and have no standing under the new TPP regime?

It seems that when the Offshoring Lobby touted the importance of banning Congressional amendments to TPP, it meant all amendments except its own. You can’t blame its organizations for seeking such blatant favoritism; it’s their job. Now we’ll see if Congress believes that enforcing the principle of equality under the law is its job.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Putting the “Dip” in U.S. Diplomacy

Tags

bailouts, Brazil, China, China meltdown, China stock markets, CNN, Congress, coupling, decoupling, Denise Labott, emerging markets, Exim, Export-Import Bank, export-led growth, free trade agreements, global leadership, Hillary Clinton, IMF, International Monetary Fund, international organizations, Iran, Iran deal, Jackie Calmes, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, The New York Times, TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Wendy Sherman

It was unintentional to be sure, but the establishment media should get some credit for providing the following two reminders of how positively dippy American foreign policy, and the analysis of this diplomacy, has become.

The latest came just yesterday, in New York Times correspondent Jackie Calmes’ article titled “I.M.F. Breakthrough Is Seen to Bolster U.S. on World Stage.” And in the likely case that Calmes isn’t responsible for the headline, the thrust of the piece is clear from the lead paragraph:

“A string of agreements between the White House and Congress, capped by last month’s surprise accord that ended a five-year impasse over the International Monetary Fund [IMF] has eased, though not dispelled, concern that America is retreating from global economic leadership.”

I’ve already explained here and here (among other places) why Calmes decision to include on this list Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and Congress’ decision to restore to life the Export-Import Bank makes no sense. So I’ll concentrate on the development she focuses on: Congress’ agreement to approve reform of the International Monetary Fund that grants more voting power to so-called “emerging market” (EM) countries like Russia, India, and especially China.

The IMF decision itself is idiotic enough. The rationale – supported by virtually every other member of the Fund – has been that these countries represent the rising powers in the global economic system, and therefore deserve more clout in one of the international organizations charged with overseeing this system. The trouble is, these countries’ wherewithal was greatly exaggerated even when they were growing strongly. The main reason is that their growth depended heavily on exporting to wealthier countries like the United States.

They’re still largely export-dependent, but rather than global growth leaders, they’ve become global growth laggards. Brazil, for example, is facing the prospect of its worst recession in more than a century. On top of its geopolitical trouble-making, Russia’s an economic mess. And China looks not only to be slowing dramatically, but completely incompetent in regulating its financial markets (not to mention its own aggressive regional moves). Even acknowledging that the United States, the European Union countries, and Japan haven’t been economic standouts either for many years, what’s the merit case now for augmenting these countries’ international influence?

But Calmes’ thesis is inane on many more fundamental levels, too. Chiefly, it parrots a series of commonplaces that, though endlessly repeated by mainstream foreign policy analysts and the politicians that bewilderingly still listen to them, keep undermining the effectiveness of American diplomacy. They start with the idea that the IMF, or any other international organization, has counted for much in world affairs. These institutions are logistically useful in providing fora (i.e., “buildings”) in which leading powers that communicate, negotiate, and otherwise deal with each other. But they have no autonomous ability to affect the course of events.

The Fund is often seen as an exception even by avowedly realist thinkers who normally take a dim view of international organizations, but contrary to Calmes’ claim, it per se has never served as “an international lender of last resort to foster global stability.” After all, it has no capacity to create wealth or other resources. In the last analysis, its lending function has always been carried out by the United States and the other major powers, who have used the Fund as a conduit. For two decades starting in the 1970s, the Fund addressed a series of financial crises in developing countries with a series of bailouts (again, financed ultimately by its members) that were conditioned on economic reform programs. But even the Fund’s staff now acknowledges that much of the advice it dispensed was lousy.

And since institutions like the Fund don’t serve as significant force multipliers for strong, wealthy countries like the United States, they’re anything but indispensable for American world leadership, economic or otherwise. As with the case of all countries aspiring to this goal, that flows from America’s own capabilities. Indeed, given America’s still crucial role as the world’s market and consumer of last resort, we’ll know that its economic leadership is at risk when its trade partners figure out another way to grow adequately.

Finally, there’s the question of whether the United States needs world leadership in the first place. I’ve explained in detail why a country this strong, wealthy, and geographically secure can remain more-than-adequately safe and prosperous even in a deeply troubled world. Indeed, America’s matchless capacity for self-sufficiency nowadays argues for less of what foreign policy types call world leadership by Washington – and therefore less exposure to the world’s woes – not more. I’m not saying that these views are beyond criticism. I am saying that they were worth debating even during the Cold War, they’re worth debating more now, and it’s dismaying that no one relying on Calmes or her Mainstream Media counterparts for their news in 2016 would have a clue that it’s not still 1956 strategically.

The second example of foreign policy dippiness came during the summer, from CNN’s Denise Labott’s August profile of Wendy Sherman, the chief staff-level U.S. negotiator of the nuclear weapons deal signed with Iran. Although I’m not enthusiastic about the agreement, I still view it as the best possible option available to America to keep Iran bomb-free short of military strikes. My confidence, however, has definitely been shaken having read Labott’s cheery revelation that “Her first career as a social worker and community organizer may seem like odd training for nuclear negotiations. But Sherman said she actually drew upon those experiences with her Iranian counterparts.”

Continued Labott : “Her ‘caseload’ may be more global, but she said the work is similar — involving the complex relationship and budding detente between Washington and Tehran, as well as managing a series of clients both inside and outside the meeting room.

“‘That skill set came in handy,’ she said. ‘You have to see all the parts in front of you. You really learn how to understand people.'”

Meaning no disrespect for the profession, but I can’t think of a background less suitable than social work for dealing with regimes like Iran’s (or North Korea’s – which was a Sherman responsibility under former President Clinton). Unless you think that the ruthless mullahs in Tehran or the arguably sociopathic leadership in Pyongyang have anything in common with a troubled American individual or family? And that the assignment is providing relief?

From another standpoint, social work and comparable activity are defined by enhancing a client’s well-being. Self-interest doesn’t even enter the picture. Is that how Sherman viewed her priorities? At least judging from this article, that’s how it seems. And Labott apparently considered this nothing less than delightful.

An optimist could finish Labott’s profile relieved that Sherman is now esconced in the academic world. A pessimist, though, could note that she’s a close confidante of her former Foggy Bottom superior, Hillary Clinton, and that she’s being talked about as a possible Secretary of State herself should the Democratic front-runner win the White House.