(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Trump was Still Right to Nix Obama’s TPP Trade Deal

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Asia, Barack Obama, bilateral trade agreements, China, export-led growth, mercantilism, multilateral trade agreements, non-tariff barriers, rules of origin, subsidies, tariffs, tech transfer, TPP, trade surpluses, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

At first I was irritated with President Trump for his expressions of interest this year in reviving U.S. efforts to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – the Pacific Rim-wide trade agreement that former President Barack Obama couldn’t persuade Congress to ratify, and that Mr. Trump removed from America’s policy agenda during his first week in office.

I still wish the President had kept the TPP consigned to the proverbial ash heap of history. But I do see one silver lining in his apparent about-face: the new opportunity it creates to remind how awful the Obama TPP was, and in particular how cynical the case that it represented a masterful ploy to contain the rise of Chinese power regionally and globally, and even shape it to serve America’s goals of sustaining an open world trading system.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that Mr. Trump’s apparent new openness to TPP results at least partly from widespread claims from mainstream politicians and analysts that its multilateral nature endowed the deal with much more potential to curb China’s trade predation than the unilateral tariffs he’s announced.

Yet this contention is the one that’s most easily refuted. First, the version of the treaty signed by Obama contained a wide open back door for many Chinese exports by allowing goods that contained high levels of content produced outside the TPP zone to be traded freely within the zone. Given how central China is to Asia-wide production chains, these loose rules of origin were bound to enable China to enjoy crucial benefits created by the TPP without incurring any of the obligations.

Second, until the eve of its departure from office, neither the Obama administration nor any TPP supporters in Congress or the mainstream media or the think tank world lifted anything more than the occasional pinky even to protest perhaps the principal source of China’s rising economic and military power – the massive transfer of cutting edge knowhow, along with capital, from U.S. tech companies to Chinese business partners or other institutions, either voluntarily (including through shortsighted training programs and investments in Chinese entities) or involuntarily (due to Beijing’s widespread practice of linking access to the China market to the handover of critical technology).

The sudden transformation of these corporate panda-huggers and their hired American guns into China skeptics and even hawks has demonstrated nothing more than that national security is the last refuge of a trade policy scoundrel – especially since by all accounts, U.S. technology and investment continue pouring into China – including defense-related tech. (See here and here for some evidence.)

Third, there’s no reason to believe that most of the other key TPP members have any interest in turning China into a free-trading economy. Quite the contrary. Whether it’s Japan or Singapore or Vietnam or Malaysia, most of the treaty’s most important countries have followed China-style economic development models (except when they’ve borrowed from Japan’s somewhat different but of course much earlier blueprint). And economic openness emphatically isn’t in the recipe. What’s central to these strategies is amassing trade surpluses with the United States and the rest of the world to help generate adequate levels of growth and employment.

The bottom line: Most TPP countries knew that effective disciplines on the trade predation largely responsible for China’s surpluses could be used against their own subsidies and non-tariff barriers. Conversely, it’s surely the reason that these economies accepted the paper curbs on mercantilism that are mandated by TPP. They’re rightly confident that thanks to the secretive bureaucracies that keep their economies effectively closed – and their barriers difficult for outsiders even to identify, much less litigate – none of these curbs is remotely enforceable.

Even better for TPP’s mercantile majority, the treaty’s dispute-resolution system ensured that the United States would be repeatedly outvoted when it sought to advance or defend its interests.

That’s why the TPP was so likely to supercharge America’s already enormous and economically damaging trade deficits. The TPP mercantilists’ liberalization promises would do nothing substantial to open their markets and increase U.S. export opportunities. But America’s TPP commitments, carried out by a government characterized by transparency, would be very effective guarantees that the American market would remain wide open to the TPP majority’s products.

President Trump has demonstrated that he recognizes many of these fatal flaws in the Obama TPP. His stated preference for bilateral over multilateral trade deals suggests an understanding that the former give the United States much more legal authority in dispute resolution. Moreover, he has explicitly tweeted that he’d only back rejoining the TPP if major fixes were made.

Precisely because he’s the only American President in recent memory to show any interest in changing the nation’s ill-considered trade status quo, and any awareness that the United States retains ample leverage to achieve its trade objectives unilaterally, I can’t rule out the possibility that Mr. Trump might turn TPP into a winner for the U.S. domestic economy (as opposed to the importing and offshoring lobbies).

But the main lesson that should be taken from decades of American trade diplomacy with Asia is that economies structured to promote exports and limit imports are going to stay substantially closed no matter what promises they make. Therefore the best course for the United States to make is to expend its energy and resources on reducing its economic engagement with Asia, rather than trying to remake the region in anything like its own image.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: A Narrow-Minded Wake-Up Call on China’s Tech Drive

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artificial intelligence, Barack Obama, budget, China, mercantilism, National Science Foundation, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, research and development, technology, technology transfer, Trade, trade surpluses, Trump

“#SMH” (Shaking My Head) is one of my favorite Twitter hashtags, and it’s the perfect reaction to a new post on FOREIGNPOLICY.com on the growing technological challenge being posed to the United States by China, and on its frightening national security implications. The post has me shaking my head, and should have you shaking yours, because for all the useful information it contains on this critical subject, it completely misses the much bigger, much more important picture. And it misses it because the authors are so transparently determined to lionize former President Obama’s record in this regard, and vilify President Trump’s – though few of the facts warrant this conclusion.

The post is useful mainly for calling attention to China’s intensifying effort to establish global superiority in artificial intelligence, and to the Trump administration’s budget policies, which look oblivious to China’s efforts because they don’t provide adequate resources for federal research efforts capable of keeping the United States ahead.

I say “look” because the budget situation may not be as dire as strongly suggested by the authors. Specifically, it’s true that the administration has proposed cutting funding for the National Science Foundation’s artificial intelligence programs by 10 percent. At the same time, as made clear by the source they relied on, “the proposed budget does call for more spending on defense research and some supercomputing.”

Much more misleading is the post’s portrayal of the Obama administration as nothing less than Churchillian in sounding the tocsin. After all, the Obama reports the authors cite as evidence of his foresight on the subject came out at the very end of his presidency. At least as important, they gloss over major non-budgetary developments crucial to understanding China’s progress.

As they themselves admit, for instance, Chinese tech companies have established presences in Silicon Valley because they believe that “by rotating Chinese staff to Silicon Valley and American staff to Chinese campuses, they can accelerate the timeline for reaching parity with the United States in AI technology and depth of talent.” Under whose administration do the authors believe this practice started? And why do they think the Chinese were confident they were so free to proceed?

Also completely ignored: Throughout his presidency, Mr. Obama did absolutely nothing as American companies continued their longstanding efforts to transfer advanced technologies to Chinese partners voluntarily, or were forced to share this knowhow due to Chinese threats to shut them out of its market. Nor did he move to prevent these firms from investing in Chinese companies working on tech products and services with clear defense implications, or to help them cope with Beijing’s demands that they pony up or else.

And let’s not forget: The Obama administration made only the most token efforts to combat the predatory Chinese practices that enabled Beijing to amass immense trade surpluses with the United States; therefore to further fuel the growth of its market and make it that much more difficult for American companies to resist tech extortion demands; and to finance its own multi-billion technology development efforts with these handsome trade profits. Indeed, Mr. Obama staunchly opposed Congressional efforts to punish China for its most important mercantile policy:  currency manipulation.  

So I share the authors’ view that federal research and development efforts have been crucial to establishing America’s intertwined global technology and military leadership, and their hope that President Trump will reject the conservative anti-government dogma that justifies virtually every type of budget cut outside traditional defense or law enforcement spending. But the idea that America’s approach to the Chinese tech challenged was remotely up to snuff before Mr. Trump’s election not only fails the test of historical accuracy. It has blinded them to all the other policy changes needed to ensure that the United States stays Number One.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Trump’s China Strategy Seems Troublingly Silo-ed

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CFIUS, China, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, Diplomatic and Security Dialogue, foreign direct investment, industrial policy, James Mathis, mercantilism, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Rex Tillerson, semiconductors, Steven Mnuchin, super-computing, technology transfer, Trump, Wilbur Ross

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mathis are meeting with Chinese counterparts today in Washington, D.C. to conduct a “Diplomatic and Security Dialogue” – a stripped down Trump administration version of some of the ginormous official bilateral sessions the two countries have held periodically in recent years.

It’s unclear whether these talks will turn out to be more than the elaborate gabfests their predecessors quickly became. But it’s much clearer that their potential to contribute significantly to America’s security will be limited unless the administration starts taking many more urgently needed steps to move the nation’s Asia grand strategy into the twenty first century. And the major missing piece of this effort continues to be a serious effort to deny China the advanced technologies it will need to continue becoming a more formidable military competitor.

Some promising decisions have been taken, or are being considered. For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is thinking of launching a national security review of U.S. trade in semiconductors with an eye toward fending off what he describes as an increasingly dangerous Chinese challenge in this defense-critical sector. Mathis and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have both publicly called for updating the interagency U.S. government process for screening prospective Chinese and other foreign investments in all defense-related companies (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS). And they along with Ross have strongly suggested that they’re thinking of redefining the relevant statute’s mandate to include economic dimensions of national security. Just as encouraging, prominent members of Congress are drafting legislation along these lines.

And most recently, the administration has announced a big new effort to ensure continued American leadership over China in super-computing (although the semiconductor industry isn’t happy with some other features of Mr. Trump’s stance on federally sponsored research and development).

Moreover, the Trump administration is responding to the Chinese challenge much more promptly than its predecessor, which prioritized this cluster of problems very late in its tenure. Its proposed responses to mercantile Chinese industrial policies in technology industries were especially weak beer.

But as with the Obama administration, Team Trump seems to be paying little attention to the continued outflow of cutting-edge defense-related American knowhow to China – including to entities that are unquestionably controlled by the Chinese government. It’s unmistakably paying much less attention to these investments than to spending billions more to upgrade American military forces in East Asia – which of course could wind up facing Chinese weapons based on U.S. tech advances.

Today’s U.S.-China talks in Washington are due to be followed up later this summer by a session devoted to economics. Maybe by then, President Trump and his advisers will be pursuing the comprehensive, integrated approach that meeting the China challenge adequately requires?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Trump’s China Trade Deal is Fatally Flawed

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2018 elections, 2020 elections, biotechnology, China, exports, financial services, GMO products, imports, mercantilism, non-tariff barriers, protectionism, tariffs, Trade, Trump, Wilbur Ross, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you (like me) haven’t been happy with America’s China trade policy for the last few decades, here’s the sunniest spin you can put on President Trump’s new trade deal with the People’s Republic: Most of the 100 days set by Washington and Beijing for reaching an agreement to resolve major bilateral issues still haven’t passed. So the two governments – and especially the American demandeur – still have ample time in theory to meet their own proclaimed standard for success.

At the same time, there’s evidence that, despite having won the White House in part on promises to stop China’s “rape” of the U.S. economy and its workers, Mr. Trump is ready to give the Chinese a lot more time to produce genuinely boast-worthy results. Principally, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the American point man for implementing the 100-day plan, told Fox Business News yesterday:

“The strategy here was to get a few quick kills; a few tangible, deliverable items that could be done quickly—make sure that there was actual performance on them … assuming that those are delivered, then we’ll go into a one-year program of negotiations. If that produces more deliverables, we’ll go into a longer-term period of negotiations.”

More indications from Ross that the agreement dealt with only the tip of the iceberg of U.S.-China trade issues: “[T]his addresses 10 items. There are probably 500 items that you could potentially discuss; maybe more than 500.”

And don’t forget the quid pro quo created by President Trump with China between trade and North Korea-related issues. As I’ve written, his decision to promise China a “far better” trade deal with the United States “if they solve the North Korean problem” could let Beijing string the United States along on trade for months with fake promises of imminent progress with Pyongyang.

The specifics of the new agreement have been analyzed in detail, so there’s no point duplicating these exercises. Ditto for the lack of penalties for non-compliance, or even enforcement mechanisms. But it is worth noting how many of the provisions are “soft” – i.e., leaving China literally square miles of wiggle room to keep blocking American exports with no reason to fear any consequences.

For instance, in biotechnology (including genetically modified grains and other crops), Beijing is merely obliged to conduct “science-based evaluations” of U.S. products seeking entry into the Chinese market, and from now on operate its safety certification system more expeditiously and more.

China has agreed to “allow wholly foreign-owned financial services firms” provide credit-rating services in the People’s Republic by July 16, but they will still need to satisfy a “licensing process for credit investigation” whose standards apparently need to meet no specific criteria whatever.

All that was won by electronic payment services was a Chinese commitment to “issue any necessary further guidelines” – again, unspecified – by July 16 and to permit U.S. firms to “begin the licensing process.” The stated aim is to provide these finance companies with “full and prompt” market access, but the agreement contains no means of judging how success will be judged.

More fundamentally, however, the Trump administration’s China agreement suffers exactly the same fatal flaw as those reached by its predecessors: It rests on the assumption that the markets of determinedly mercantile countries can be genuinely opened with skillfully enough worded documents. Sadly, nothing in the history of American trade diplomacy can justify such optimism about conventional trade diplomacy.

After all, these economies understandably view their protectionist approaches as successes and see no need for significant change. The most important trade barriers they maintain are non-tariff barriers that are developed and put into effect by powerful, highly secretive bureaucracies that make identifying these practices – much less litigating against them – excruciatingly difficult. Largely as a result, protectionist systems have grown quite adept at agreeing to dismantle various barriers while generating the same results with new mercantile practices.

Think of it this way: Any economy that, as Ross indicated, could still be presenting more than 500 market access problems to foreign competitors after decades of market-opening promises is clearly an economy that’s been thoroughly exposed to the case for much freer trade – and that has emphatically rejected it.

As Adam Smith recognized, a country can hope to penetrate such rivals by threatening to impose its own barriers to the protectionist country’s exports or actually erecting them. And Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to head down this road both as candidate and as president. Perhaps he believes that the Chinese have taken these statements to heart, and that the 100-day exercise – and whatever other talks might be necessary – will simply iron out the details.

But if so, genuine negotiations – in the sense of give and take – shouldn’t even be necessary to begin with. China should have been informed that it’s time to explain how it’s going to import more American goods and services, how many more it will buy, and by when. Team Trump should have also let the Chinese know that it will be judge, jury, and court of appeals in terms of disputes and verification, and that stiff, escalating tariffs on Chinese products will be applied until deadlines are met and targets are reached – for an extended period of time. The same approach should be used for other predatory Chinese practices that disadvantage U.S.-based producers.

For assuming Mr. Trump wants to keep control of Congress, and avoid lame-duck status, he faces some China and trade-related deadlines of his own that are approaching faster than he may realize. They’re called the 2018 and 2020 elections.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why ‘Less Can be More’ in Trade with Germany – & Others

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Angela Merkel, currency manipulation, euro, Eurozone, Germany, mercantilism, non-tariff barriers, public investment, Trade, trade barriers, Trump, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This week’s first meeting – in Washington, D.C. – between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Trump is being billed as a confrontation between polar opposites due to apparently clashing positions on immigration, trade, alliances and international organizations, and contrasting personalities. Actually, notwithstanding the penchant of the mainstream media and bipartisan policy establishment for Trump hysteria-mongering, one of the divides between Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel may actually be more fundamental than recognized. Growing trade tensions might be signaling that the two economies simply aren’t structured to trade with each other in mutually beneficial ways – at least not at current levels.

So far, the mounting trade row – which could already be the most serious since American ire at an allegedly undervalued deutschemark during the Nixon era – has produced a now-predictable policy debate. The Trump administration is accusing Germany’s powerful economy of unfairly benefiting from a euro that’s kept weak because of the economic problems of its partners in the eurozone. As a result, goes the American complaint, its goods enjoy major price advantages over their U.S. competition all over the world for reasons that have little to do with market forces.

Germany and its sympathizers counter that the country simply makes terrific products, especially advanced manufactures, and that its trade barriers are actually on the low side. Another argument raised in Germany’s defense – in part because of a strong inflation-phobia created by the disastrous experience of the 1920s and by the population’s natural frugality, Germans tend to be low spenders and high savers.

All of the pro-German positions have merit. And the Trump administration case is further complicated by Germany’s consistent calls for eurozone economic policies that would tend to strengthen the common currency.

Yet Germany’s free trade record is at the least open to dispute. Although its tariff levels are generally low, like most other U.S. trade partners, it uses a value-added tax that effectively raises the prices of foreign goods headed for its market and reduces the prices of its exports via the rebates they receive. Moreover, even before President Trump took office, the U.S. government repeatedly reported that non-tariff barriers maintained by Berlin “can be a difficult hurdle for companies wishing to enter the market and require close attention by U.S. exporters.” The country’s government procurement market appears to pose special problems. According to the American Commerce Department under former President Obama:

“Selling to German government entities is not an easy process. German government procurement is formally non-discriminatory and compliant with the GATT Agreement on Government Procurement and the European Community’s procurement directives. That said, it is a major challenge to compete head-to-head with major German or other EU suppliers who have established long-term ties with purchasing entities.”

Nonetheless, the more closely the German economy is examined, the less amenable to standard trade policy remedies it looks. For Germany has long decided to create a national economic and business model that seeks both to maximize net exports and depress consumption at home. Two examples should suffice to make the case.

First, although Germany’s is, as frequently noted, a high-cost, high-regulation country, upon adopting the euro, its government put into effect a series of policies that put its labor costs on a much slower growth path than those of the rest of the eurozone and the high income world as a whole (including the United States). As many critics of Germany have charged, the resulting wage repression has overpowered the euro-dollar exchange rate and in fact amounted to an “internal devaluation” that produced the same effects as currency manipulation.

Second, Germany has also limited its consumption levels in part through very low expenses on infrastructure and other public investments. Moreover, according to one former European Central Bank official, the country’s external orientation has been so pronounced that “private investment in Germany’s aging capital stock has been weakened by many German companies’ desire to invest abroad.”

Revealingly, some of the harshest attacks on these and similar German policies have come from the eurozone itself. In particular, members like Greece and other southerly countries have accused Berlin of conducting a mercantilist campaign to grow at their expense by flooding them with exports and denying them comparable opportunities to supply the German market.

Without taking sides in this dispute, it’s clear that because the eurozone is a currency union, its success arguably depends on members conducting both their domestic and foreign economic policies in mutually compatible ways. So in principle, Germany’s eurozone fellows have grounds for complaining about the totality of the German national model. (The reverse holds as well in principle.)

The United States also should be perfectly free to ask Germany to change its priorities. Unlike eurozone members, however, it has no legitimate claims to influence over this vital aspect of German sovereignty. Germans apparently have decided that their choices work for them, and are absolutely correct to insist that aside from the rules of the World Trade Organization or other international legal arrangements, they have no obligations to accede to foreign demands for reform. Berlin, moreover, has a point when it notes that the United States should look to domestic practices of its own that might be hampering its global competitiveness, rather than placing the burden of change on others.

This German argument, however, is not dispositive. After all, if America’s national business and economic model emphasizes consumption and domestic-led growth rather than promoting net exports, that’s a choice that its own political system has been entitled to make. Moreover, it’s a choice that makes considerable sense for a big, continent-sized economy with great potential for more national self-sufficiency in a wide variety of goods and services. Germany has no more right to dictate U.S. preferences than vice versa.

The decisive difference between the two countries is that Germany has been happy with the pre-Trump status quo, and the United States has not. Washington of course has the right to press complaints about possible German violations of world trade law and other trade agreements. But it also needs to recognize that such conventional approaches are dwarfed by the breadth and depth of Germany’s approach to economics. Promoting German reform isn’t likely to work, either – given the above sovereignty concerns, and given the sheer difficulty facing even so powerful a country as the United States in urging domestic reform on another powerful country – especially one that views itself as a success.

So what to do?

First, in general terms, understand that, however legitimate Germany’s sovereign decisions, they create problems to which the United States is equally entitled to respond

Second, without continuing to hector or nag Germany, figure out the most effective response and act accordingly.

Third, depending on Germany’s counter-moves, decide what combination of unilateral carrots, sticks, and negotiations, might achieve progress (including some acceptable compromise), while preserving approximately current levels of trade.

But fourth, recognize along the way that Germany’s legitimate sovereign economic decisions simply may not permit bilateral trade to continue at those levels with acceptable results for the United States. If need be, then, revert to whatever unilateral strategy can preserve or enhance interests America has identified as its own priorities.

The new status quo would put the ball in Germany’s court, and grant it full scope to accommodate the United States if it’s dissatisfied, or make whatever other changes are needed to achieve whatever new objectives it chooses.

In other words, Washington should deal with Germany through an ongoing process of give and take, employing a variety of tactics and tools in flexible, agile ways. The aim would be to capitalize on its considerable leverage but also understand where it can and can’t hope to succeed at acceptable cost and risk. This approach clearly has a less impressive upside than efforts to produce grand bargains, or than more extensive international economic integration schemes — both of which can in theory maximize bilateral commerce. But its very modesty means that it’s less likely to risk angry misunderstandings and consequent major blow-ups, and more likely to result in trade and investment that’s sustainable not only economically, but politically, socially, and culturally.

President Trump can think of this new policy framework as the Less is More Strategy. And he should realize that its usefulness extends far beyond Germany.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: China’s Still Taking the Easy — Export-Led — Way to Growth

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China, export-led growth, exports, Financial Crisis, G20, Global Imbalances, mercantilism, protectionism, rebalancing, recession, recovery, Trade, UN Conference on Trade and Development, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Ever since the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the ensuing recession shifted global growth into a much slower gear, the world’s business and economic policy establishment has identified at least one likely silver lining: Sluggish demand in its major foreign markets would force China to speed up its transition from an export-led to a domestic demand-led economy. In the process, the massive, U.S.-China-centered worldwide trade and investment imbalances that resulted in unsustainable international growth patterns and set the stage for the crisis would start to moderate, and the foundation for healthier global growth would be laid.

This scenario was especially appealing to the economic and business powers-that-be because it held that changes in global trade and investment flows would take place without governments resorting to tariffs and other interventions that history supposedly taught would set all countries back further.

Today, however, Reuters reported on data showing that these claims have indeed been too good to be true. As I have predicted, for the closely related reasons that its consumers as a whole remain far too poor to generate satisfactory Chinese growth on their own, and that an import- and offshoring-friendly U.S. government would preserve the export-led approach as Beijing’s easy way out, China has confounded the rosy post-crisis scenario. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), although the world economy and trade flows remain weak, China has coped by boosting its market share.

In fact, UNCTAD contends, not only did China’s share of world exports rise from 12.3 to 13.8 percent between 2014 and 2015 alone. That 13.8 percent represents the highest global export share any country has enjoyed since the United States in 1968. Revealingly, at that time, the world economy was much more vigorous (even though major inflationary and related pressures on the gold standard were mounting), and America’s predominance was still near its zenith.

Moreover, China’s global trade surplus hit a new record last year, too: $595.4 billion. So could we also drop the widely expressed idea that the PRC is an important engine of global growth on net – or is generating any global growth on net? To the contrary: Countries with surging worldwide trade surpluses mathematically must be subtracting from global growth, and in a slow-recovery world, they are nothing less than parasitic.

Discouragingly, however, the official global rhetorical consensus – as expressed in the communique issued by the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors last week – remains focused on using “all policy tools – monetary, fiscal and structural” to foster growth, and resisting “all forms of protectionism.” Leading academics who claim to understand the threats posed by beggar-thy-neighbor currency policies also still appear convinced that more government deficit spending in particular will raise all global boats enough to end the current stagnation even if trade flows are free to stay as lopsided as ever – or worse.

So next year, the safest economic bets seem to be continued sluggish growth, more Chinese trade gains at the rest of the world’s expense, mounting international imbalances, a consequently greater threat of Financial Crisis 2.0 – and repeated insistence that interference with trade must be avoided at all costs. Unless American voters get angry enough?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Times’ History of Free Trade is Bunk

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Adam Smith, Binyamin Appelbaum, Donald Trump, Douglas A. Irwin, economics, economists, free trade, I.M. Destler, Jagdish Bhagwati, John Maynard Keynes, John Stuart Mill, mercantilism, protectionism, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Robert Torrens, Ronald Reagan, Smoot-Hawley Tariff, strategic trade theory, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s easy to imagine the thought processes responsible for The New York Times running last week’s article describing Donald Trump’s views on trade policy as “Breaking with 200 Years of Economic Orthodoxy”:

“We are the newspaper of record.”

“The public needs vital context to make intelligent decisions.”

“We can flaunt our matchless knowledge of history.”

What a shame, then, that economic correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum’s piece failed so badly on so many counts.

Let’s be charitable and start off by accentuating the positive. Appelbaum deserves credit for characterizing trade concerns as “among his oldest and steadiest public positions.” That’s a healthy corrective to media-wide reporting portraying the Republican presidential front-runner as motivated solely or mainly by – nativist and even racist – hostility to immigration.

It was also encouraging that Appelbaum acknowledged (though in an excessively narrow way, as will be demonstrated below) that “economists have oversold their case.” And he helpfully quoting a leading voice in the profession as noting not only that foreign protectionist practices are all too common, but that “It might be that the threat of tariffs or other trade sanctions could cause American trading partners to open up their markets or drop their barriers to trade.”

Unfortunately, nothing else Appelbaum wrote met standards of current or historic accuracy. First, although he correctly described mercantilism’s focus on amassing trade surpluses, he never pointed to a Trump statement endorsing such a goal. Conversely, the author errs when he contends that the orthodoxy calls for maximizing international trade flows. Instead, it calls for permitting global trade to reflect patterns of comparative advantage to the greatest extent possible.

As for Appelbaum’s brief history of American trade politics, it omits crucial facts. Specifically, he quotes as gospel the view of the University of Maryland’s I.M. Destler that “For most of the last century…skepticism about trade had been relegated to the fringes of the Republican Party.” But no significant Republican shift toward trade liberalization took place until after World War II. Indeed, legislators Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley, sponsors of the 1930 tariff, were both Republicans.

And even after most of the party warmed toward freer trade positions, major tariffs were imposed in 1971 by President Richard M. Nixon and throughout the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan – hardly fringe figures.

Finally, Appelbaum also seriously distorts the economics profession’s position on trade liberalization. Why, for example, didn’t he point out that, like one of the contemporary he cited, Adam Smith himself endorsed the threat and use of tariffs to open foreign markets. He also left out all the major loopholes in standard free trade theory pointed out by some of the biggest names in economic history. This history of the idea of free trade by Dartmouth’s Douglas A. Irwin makes clear how significant they have been. Here’s a summary drawn from my (New York Times) review of Irwin’s 1996 study – which unfortunately has not been digitized:

“Robert Torrens and John Stuart Mill explained how countries could use tariffs to enhance national wealth by stimulating the production of more profitable exports. Mill showed that tariffs protecting ‘infant’ industries could help them survive competition with more established rivals and eventually become self-supporting — without exacting larger costs from that country’s consumers or other economic sectors.

“During the 1920’s, Frank Graham of Princeton theorized that tariffs could provide permanent help for national economies by encouraging a shift from agriculture into manufacturing, thereby increasing a country’s total wealth. In the wake of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes insisted that free trade policies could impoverish individual countries during periods of already high unemployment, deflation and fixed exchange rates, particularly when the deflation was caused by a central bank’s determination to keep interest rates up. And in the 1980’s, a school of ”strategic trade” theorists contended that the special characteristics of certain industries (particularly those dominated by a few producers) could allow governments in some instances to use export subsidies to create national advantage.”

Irwin was correct in noting that “these arguments simply represent exceptions to a still-enthroned free trade rule — not new rules themselves (my paraphrase).” But it’s also true that these exceptions are so substantial that they call the theory’s validity into question.

In fact, Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, a leading free trade champion for decades, put it best when he observed, ”One cannot assert that free trade is ‘the policy that economic theory tells us is always right’ . . . certain developments make the case for free trade more robust whereas others make it less so . . . the latter are subject to many difficulties as one passes from the classroom to the corridors of policy making.”

I suppose that Appelbaum and The Times should be praised to trying to convey the idea that a high profile current campaign issue has deep roots in the past. But is it so unreasonable to hope that they could do the story anything close to justice?