(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Thank Goodness Free Trade Zealots Didn’t Completely Destroy the U.S. Textiles Industry

Tags

apparel, Apple, health security, healthcare products, manufacturing, NAFTA, National Council of Textile Organizations, NCTO, North American Free Trade Agreement, offshoring, textile, The Race to the Bottom, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The news media have been filled lately with encouraging stories like this one from the Financial Times – reporting that “US factories that usually mass produce hoodies and T-shirts are being retooled to make face masks as chief executives in the clothing industry try to alleviate shortages of equipment to combat coronavirus. A group of nine American apparel companies began producing the masks on Monday….”

Moreover, according to their main industry organization, companies like these and their domestic manufacturing plants “make a broad range of inputs and finished products used in an array of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical nonwoven/textile supplies, including surgical gowns, face masks, antibacterial wipes, lab coats, blood pressure cuffs, cotton swabs and hazmat suits. These items are vital to the government’s effort to ramp up emergency production of these critical supplies.”

These actions are not only commendable and critically important nowadays. They’re also a major reminder that it’s fortunate in the extreme that there are still domestic textile and apparel industries with production in the United States – and that this sector has survived despite every effort made by pre-Trump Presidents and Congresses either to put them out of business and send them offshore.

Washington’s motivation? Nothing personal or political – just blind adherence to the bedrock economic principle of comparative advantage, which simply put holds that if other countries make certain products more efficiently than the United States (with or without subsidies, by the way), U.S. policy should simply permit the those stateside industries to wither and die, in full confidence that Americans will always be able to import whatever they need whenever they need it.

Geopolitics was at work, too.  Garment-making in particular is the kind of “starter” sector needed by developing countries to start down the road toward industrialization and therefore the broader economic progress they understandably covet. As a result, foreign policy makers viewed chunks of the U.S. industry as an ideal offering for winning and keeping allies in the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union.    

A labor-intensive sector like apparel was consigned to this fate decades ago. But a sector like textiles was treated similarly – even though it’s the kind of capital- and technology-intensive industry in which high-income, advanced economies like America’s are supposed to excel. Moreover, as countless textile executives with whom I’ve spoken over the years have emphasized, even though they (who make the fabrics and similar materials) differ significantly from the clothing makers (who essentially cut and sew the stuff together), their fates have been closely connected. For the apparel companies are prime customers for the textile producers (though far from the only ones, as you’ll realize if you’ve ever owned, e.g., a carpet), and foreign governments could be counted on to give their own textile sectors a leg up in sales by throwing up all manner of obstacles to U.S.-owned firms supplying overseas garment makers.

In fact, pre-Trump administrations continued to dismiss the textile industry long after its potential became clear for creating all sorts of high tech fabrics with breakthrough qualities like temperature and odor control and bio-monitoring capabilities.

It’s true that the companies could always follow what you might call the “Apple model” – after the electronics giant’s strategy of researching, engineering, and designing its products domestically, and sending the manufacturing overseas. But as I documented nearly two decades ago in my globalization book, The Race to the Bottom, once industries offshore production, many of these so-called white collar activities tend to follow – since there’s nothing like physical proximity to generate the kind of intensive, interactive collaboration between labs and shop floors often needed to spark innovation.

Moreover, as Americans are learning today, you can be the world’s innovation leader by leaps and bounds, but if you lack the domestic production facilities when emergencies arise, you may be standing at the end of the line for supplies of vital products.  In fact, as of late last week, no fewer than 38 countries had limited exports of healthcare-related goods.

So it’s pretty appalling to see how successful pre-Trump U.S. leaders were in stripping the nation of these capabilities. Federal Reserve statistics tell us that inflation-adjusted production of textiles in the United States has sunk by just over half since January, 1994 – when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect and officially ushered in a long offshoring-happy phase of U.S. trade policy. And if you think that’s terrible (which it is), it’s a performance that positively shines when compared to apparel (and leather goods) production. That’s down more than 86 percent during this period.

Interestingly, just two years before NAFTA’s advent, a pair of vocalists, Fontella Bass and Bobby McLure, released a song titled “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone).” What a near-tragedy that shortsighted American trade policymakers didn’t realize how thoroughly this message can apply to major industries. What a blessing that the nation’s remaining textile and apparel makers chose to hang on. And thank goodness that the nation has a President today who clearly recognizes the imperative of Making it in America not only in textiles and apparel, but across the manufacturing spectrum. 

P.S. Full disclosure: For nearly two decades, funders of my work at the U.S. Business and Industry Council included a major domestic textile company. At the same time, the firm suddenly and unceremoniously dumped the organization in 2009 (and not for lack of resources). So my warm and fuzzy feelings toward the sector are limited.

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A New North American Trade Study’s Crucial Footnote

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automotive, Canada, Center for Automotive Research, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, regional content, rules of origin, tariffs, trade bloc, Trump, U.S. International Trade Commission, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USITC, USMCA, {What's Left of) Our Economy

That was some footnote Commissioner Jason E. Kearns apparently insisted be inserted into the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (USITC) recent report on the economic impact of the Trump administration’s attempt to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In fact, it contains the key to giving this Congressionally mandated study of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) a passing or failing grade. And a special bonus – it indicates why all three countries should have followed my advice and turned North America into a genuine trade bloc.

The particular Kearns-related footnote I’m talking about (number 66, on p. 57) dealt with the USITC’s analysis of one of the most controversial (and in my view, most promising) provisions of the new framework for North American trade – which has been signed by the continent’s three governments but not yet ratified by any of their legislatures. It’s the agreement’s attempts to restructure automotive industry trade among the signatories. These proposed new arrangements matter greatly because trade in vehicles and parts represents such a big share of overall North American trade (more than 20 percent of America’s total goods trade with Canada and Mexico, according to this study).

In brief, at the Trump administration’s instigation, USMCA increases the share of a vehicle’s content that needs to be made somewhere inside the free trade zone in order to qualify for tariff-free treatment, and includes other measures aimed at curbing and even reversing the movement of U.S.-owned auto production and the related jobs from the United States to much lower wage and overall lower cost Mexico, along with the resulting flows of Mexican-assembled vehicles and parts into the American market.

The USITC concluded that although the new NAFTA would produce slight benefits for the American economy overall, including for domestic U.S. manufacturing, the new content measures (called “rules of origin,” or “ROO” for short) themselves would drag on overall economic performance. In fact, they would even slightly depress U.S. vehicle production, not increase it.

As always the case with such projections, these conclusions are based on numerous assumptions, and as almost always the case, at least some of these assumptions can be pretty dodgy. Two that I have special problems with: First, when it comes to auto parts, the USTIC only examines only trade and investment in engines and transmissions; and second, the Commission doesn’t take into the jobs multiplier of vehicle and parts manufacturing.

These assumptions surely skew the conclusions to the downside because, as important as engines and transmissions are, the report itself acknowledges that other parts nowadays represent about 37 percent of total domestic parts output; and because the auto industry’s multiplier effect is really high. Indeed, according to a 2015 report by the Center for Automotive Research, for each American job created in domestic auto or light truck manufacturing, seven other jobs are created in the rest of the economy. That finding is significant because the Center has claimed that the new origin rules would exact exorbitant costs, and because it gets significant funding from an auto industry that has expressed major reservations about them.

But much more fundamental issues are raised by that footnote 66, especially considering these questionable assumptions. Here it is in full:

“Commissioner Kearns notes that, as described above, the model appears to suggest that the trade restrictiveness of a ROO is inversely related to its positive impact on the U.S. economy. Carried to its logical conclusion, this would appear to suggest that the best ROO is a very weak or nonexistent ROO. In turn, this would result in other countries, which do not incur any obligations to import U.S. products, obtaining unilateral, duty-free access to the U.S. market. If, on the other hand, we were to compute an ROO that optimizes regional content while recognizing that there may be slack in the economy, we may estimate a gain to the overall economy from the automotive ROO.”

Kearns first observation not only makes perfect sense. It’s the only sensible macro-conclusion that can be drawn about rules of origin. Because their complete absence (the counter-factual the Commission seems to have ignored) would indeed permit non-North American producers to reap all the gains generated by the USMCA (mainly, unfettered access to the immense continental market) without incurring any of the obligations. That’s supposed to result in a net plus for the American economy, the predominant market prize in North America?

The second observation is even more interesting. It notes that much more stringent rules (those that would “optimize regional content”) could be expected to leave the overall economy better off than the current rules. And as I’ve observed, the low tariff penalties (2.5 percent) imposed on non-North American auto producers for ignoring the origin rules are guaranteed to minimize the gains they produce. Therefore, much higher tariff penalties – which would approximate those commonly associated with trade blocs aimed at minimizing imports – would come closest to maximizing that what the USITC calls “the gain to the economy from the automotive ROO.”

President Trump claims that an “America First” approach to trade policy distinguishes him sharply from his predecessors. Footnote 66 in the USTIC report makes as possible that a genuine “North America First” strategy would have best advanced that goal – and that in this case, anyway, there was no reward for timidity.

Making News: Last Night’s National Radio China Interview Podcast Now On-Line & a Major Seminar on North America’s Future

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caravans AMLO, Gordon G. Chang, Henry George School of Social Science, Huawei, Immigration, Jorge Castaneda, Lopez Obrador, Making News, NAFTA, North America, North American Free Trade Agreement, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Trump

I’m pleased to report that the podcast is now on-line of my interview last night on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show. Click here for a lively update on the rapidly evolving  U.S.-China trade conflict and the China tech executive’s arrest provided by John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me.

Also, late last month, I had the privilege of moderating a seminar held at New York City’s Henry George School of Social Science (where I serve as a Trustee) featuring Jorge Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister who also ranks as a leading authority on U.S.-Mexico relations, Mexico’s politics and economy, and Western Hemisphere affairs more generally.

As the title of the seminar noted, North America’s economy is at a crossroads – due to the recent revamp of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), the inauguration of a new Mexican President, and the presence of an avowed disrupter in the White House. Let’s not forget, moreover, a new, caravans-fueled stage of the ongoing immigration crisis!

The video is now on-line, and because no one is more qualified than Jorge to explain how all these events do – and don’t – fit together, viewers will be rewarded with a treasure trove of information and incisive analysis.  Here’s the link.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Following Up: Lousy U.S. Auto-Making Productivity and Those GM Layoffs

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automotive, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Detroit automakers, General Motors, GM, Jobs, layoffs, motor vehicles, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, offshoring, productivity, total factor productivity, Trade, Trump, yoFollowing Up

Yesterday, I posted some data – with a special focus on major victim state Ohio and major victim region Youngstown – providing some badly needed perspective on General Motors newly announced manufacturing jobs layoffs in the United States (along with Canada and other unspecified locations). Today I’d like to follow up with some statistics that shed more light on GM’s decision – and the strengths and weaknesses of the American domestic automobile industry.

There’s no doubt that, as widely noted, many trends and developments are responsible for the new job cuts – which are highly unlikely to be restricted to GM alone. Some of the biggest include changing product mixes (away from smaller vehicles and toward larger vehicles), new technologies (for electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles), and the inevitable waning of the latest “automotive cycle” – that is, a slowdown in auto sales that has been entirely predictable following the sector’s strong recovery from a terrifying downturn during the last recession.

But one industry trend that’s been sorely neglected – and that surely bears heavily on the “Detroit 3” auto companies’ failure to continue producing smaller vehicles profitably at their domestic factories (the plants targeted for closure) – concerns its productivity performance. In a word, it’s been lousy – which supports last week’s post presenting evidence that U.S. metals-using industries like automotive have been using crutches like (foreign government-subsidized and therefore artificially) cheap raw materials, along with massive job and production offshoring, to juice their profits rather than efficiency-enhancing improvements resulting from creating new technologies, investing in new machinery, devising better management techniques, or some combination of these measures.

That post last week featured data showing that the American transportation equipment sector (which of course includes auto manufacturing) has performed relatively well during the current U.S. economic recovery and the previous expansion – though the rate of growth decelerated over that time span. These periods were examined because they were marked by a tremendous increase in American imports of steel over-produced and dumped into the United States by foreign producers, which pushed steel prices way down for reasons having nothing to do with free trade or free markets.

But more detailed statistics make clear that the automotive sector per se lately has fared worse when it comes to total factor productivity – the broadest of two measures of productivity tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the productivity measure I examined last week.

During the 2001-2007 American expansion, total factor productivity in the motor vehicles sector actually grew faster than that for transportation equipment overall – 22.70 percent versus 13.38 percent. But from the 2009 start of the current recovery through 2016 (the latest available data), vehicle makers’ total factor productivity advanced by only 2.53 percent – that is, much more slowly than the 9.67 percent improvement registered by transportation equipment overall.

In fact, since achieving a huge (15 percent) snapback in total factor productivity during the recovery’s first year following a deep (12.29 percent) nosedive during the recession, vehicle-makers’ total factor productivity fell by 10.94 percent through 2016. As a result, its total factor productivity hasn’t improved on net since 1989.

Also interesting: Since the U.S. ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 created a bright green light for automotive production and job offshoring, total factor productivity in American motor vehicle-making is up by only 9.20 percent. That’s a considerably slower rate of progress than for manufacturing overall (20.13 percent), even though automotive trade has figured so heavily in U.S. trade flows with fellow NAFTA signatories Mexico and Canada so far.

I don’t mean to minimize the challenges all automotive manufacturers face given the multi-dimensional crossroads that seems to be arriving rapidly for the sector. What should be glaringly obvious, though, is that they’re unlikely to be met adequately – including producing smaller vehicles profitably, especially if and when oil prices start rising again – with a productivity performance that barely qualifies as second-rate.    

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Trade Policy Deserves Blame for the Caravans

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apparel, asylum seekers, Bangladesh, CAFTA, caravan, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Central America, Central America Free Trade Agreement, China, economic development, El Salvador, globalization, Guatemala, Honduras, immigrants, Immigration, manufacturing, migrants, Multi-Fibre Arrangement, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Northern Triangle, Trade, Uruguay Round, Vietnam, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Hot on the heels of the current caravan of Central Americans heading through Mexico to the U.S. border, another such procession is gathering in Guatemala. And these two have followed the flood of unaccompanied migrant children from the area that reached the United States in 2014.

I wish I could tell you that there’s a silver bullet for solving the problem – though nothing could be clearer than that these human tides will keep organizing in even greater numbers if Washington follows the general advice of the Open Borders lobby to view all of the caravan-ers as legitimate asylum-seekers entitled to full due process once they reach the border and request this status. Upon which time current procedures call for recording their claims and then releasing them based on the ludicrous assumption that they’ll report back to immigration court on the appointed date and risk being rejected and thus deported.

What I can tell you is that this crisis has been greatly aggravated by an unforgivably short-sighted U.S. trade policy strategy that emerged in the 1990s. It consisted of indiscriminately liberalizing trade with developing countries, and thereby ignoring the case for targeting trade diplomacy to ensure that countries and regions of greatest importance to the United States receive the lion’s share of the benefits. And the prime victims of this strategic failure – which mainly reflected the determination of offshoring multinational manufacturers and Big Box retailers to gain maximum flexibility to source imported inputs and final products – were the poorer countries of the Western Hemisphere. That group of course includes Mexico and the Central American countries that have sent so many migrants northward.

Interestingly, Central America and the Caribbean countries were placed prominently in line to receive significant shares of the vast U.S. market by a Reagan-era initiative aimed mainly at stemming the spread of left-wing revolutionary forces in the region. But scant years later, any hopes generated by this strategy for fostering more prosperity in these impoverished regions and strengthening the appeal of pro-Western leaders were kneecapped by two big decisions.

The first was the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. The second was the phase out of U.S. and other developed countries’ quotas on apparel imports that was approved the following year as part of the Uruguay Round global agreement that reduced various trade barriers worldwide and created the World Trade Organization (WTO). And the third was the Clinton administration’s subsequent rush to liberalize trade with a host of low-income countries outside the Western Hemisphere.

In principle NAFTA’s tight focus on Mexico was justifiable given Mexico’s size, position as a U.S. neighbor, and history of political, economic, and social policy failure that seemed to be reaching a crisis point. But economic growth and employment could still have been greatly lifted in Mexico and Central American (along with the Caribbean countries) had American trade liberalization stopped or at least paused there.

Yet the quota phaseout forbade Washington from incorporating any strategic or non-economic considerations into apparel trade policy, whether conditions urgently required them or not.  As a result, it ensured that the benefits of freer trade would be greatly watered down (and many garnered by China and the rest of developing Asia in particular), and insult was added to injury by new liberalization deals reached or renewed, or decisions made, regarding Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa, Jordan, most of developing Asia (in the form of a deal on information technology products, including labor-intensive consumer electronics), and China. Largely as a result, the poorer countries of the Western Hemisphere were left in the dust in the business models of the multinationals and the big retailers.

Nowhere does the opportunity lost by Mexico and Central America come through more clearly than in the apparel trade figures. This sector is almost always the first utilized by developing countries to begin their industrialization and modernization drives mainly because its own labor intensivity means that capital and technology requirements are pretty modest, the relevant skills can be taught fairly easily, and its job-creation promise is substantial.

Here are the figures for apparel imports from Mexico, the three “Northern Triangle” Central American countries, China, and two other current Asian textile giants (Bangladesh and Vietnam) for four key years. Next to them will be the figure for the share of American apparel consumption (market share) won at that point by each. We start with 1997 because that’s the year when the U.S. government began adopting its current dominant system for slicing and dicing trade and manufacturing data – which enables us to see statistics that are apples-to-apples. The second year is 2001 – the year China’s was admitted into the WTO – and thus gained substantial immunity from American laws aimed at curbing predatory trade practices. The third year is 2006 – when Congress approved a Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) negotiate by George W. Bush’s administration. And the fourth year is last year – the latest for which we have full-year numbers.

1997

Mexico:                       $5.317b                    11.29 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.052b                     2.18 percent

Guatemala:                  $0.973b                     2.07 percent

Honduras:                    $1.689b                     3.59 percent

China:                          $7.279b                   15.46 percent

Bangladesh:                 $1.442b                      3.06 percent

Vietnam:                      $0.026b                      0.06 percent

2001:

Mexico:                       $8.112b                     12.99 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.634b                      2.62 percent

Guatemala:                  $1.630b                       2.61 percent

Honduras:                    $2.438b                       3.91 percent

China:                          $8.597b                     13.47 percent

Bangladesh:                 $2.101b                      3.37 percent

Vietnam:                      $0.048b                       0.08 percent

2006:

Mexico:                       $5.514b                       7.16 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.408b                      1.83 percent

Guatemala:                  $1.685b                      2.19 percent

Honduras:                    $2.519b                      3.27 percent

China:                        $22.405b                    22.09 percent

Bangladesh:                 $2.915b                       3.79 percent

Vietnam:                      $3.226b                       4.19 percent

2017:

Mexico:                       $3.806b                       4.52 percent 

El Salvador:                 $1.920b                       2.28 percent

Guatemala:                  $1.371b                       1.63 percent

Honduras:                    $2.522b                       3.00 percent

China:                        $29.322b                     34.85 percent

Bangladesh:                $5.046b                       6.00 percent

Vietnam:                    $11.613b                     13.80 percent

The big takeaway? Even during the decade after the Central America free trade deal was signed, the three Northern Triangle countries actually saw their share of the U.S. apparel market stagnate or actually shrink. Mexico’s share has been cut by about almost 60 percent. And the business won by China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam has exploded – since 2001 for China, and since 2006 for the two other Asians. Again, the year that the free trade deal that was supposed to benefit El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras was inked.

With Mexico, there are of course mitigating factors. Chiefly, although its apparel competitiveness in the U.S. market is way down, its competitiveness in higher value automotive manufacturing in particular is way up. But millions of poor Mexicans still could have benefited from apparel employment, and no such progress has been made in Central America – which is partly understandable since incomes are even lower, and governments and other institutions needed for economic development are so much weaker.

Apparel should have been the great hope for these populations, but that sector’s potential for expanding production (which of course needs to be export-oriented since these countries’ domestic markets are tiny) and employment has been virtually choked off. Just as important, the prospect that apparel wages in the Northern Triangle might rise adequately has been limited, too – since pay throughout developing East and South Asia (even in China, according to the chart below) remains so much lower.

American trade policy could have lent a big helping hand to Central America had it adopted a strategically sensible set of priorities. But it failed to learn a fundamental lesson of strategy: When everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. You can see the victims of this failure in the flow of human misery heading up from the Northern Triangle.

Making News: Last Night’s National Radio Interview Podcast on the New Trump Trade Deal Now On-Line

Tags

Breitbart News Tonight, Making News, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Trade, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA

I’m pleased to report that last night I got yet another short notice chance to appear on national radio to discuss the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – the new trade deal reached by the three North American countries to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

But although you can’t listen live to that appearance on Breitbart News Tonight, the podcast is available on-line, and you can access it at this link. Scroll down until you see the episode with my name.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

 

Making News: Podcast of National Radio Interview on Trump’s New North American Trade Deal…& More

Tags

China, Gordon G. Chang, i24News, Making News, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Thaddeus McCotter, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, Trump, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA

The opportunity came in too late to post a preview, but I’m pleased to announce that I was back on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show last night.  The subject – discussed with John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and former Michigan Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter – was the new successor trade deal to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and how its negotiation might impact U.S.-China trade relations.  Click here for the podcast. (Note:  The official name of the new agreement is the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.)

Also last night, and too late to preview, I was interviewed on Israel’s i24News on the same subject.  You can see the streaming video here, but first you need to become a paid subscriber to the network.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: So Far, Trump’s New NAFTA Only Deserves an “Incomplete”

Tags

automotive, China, currency manipulation, dispute resolution, domestic content, exports, globalization, imports, light trucks, NAFTA, non-market economy status, North American Free Trade Agreement, passenger cars, rules of origin, SUVs, Trade, Trump, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA, value-added taxes, VATs, {What's Left of) Our Economy

“What was all the fuss about?” is a question that supporters and especially critics of conventional, pre-Trump trade policies are entitled to ask after reading the text of the new “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” – the brand new revamp of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) just agreed to by the three signatories.

Although President Trump has repeatedly called NAFTA “the worst trade deal ever,” the new pact seems to retain the previous deal’s fatal flaw. Interestingly, though, the very modesty of “USMCA’s” departures from NAFTA means that, because U.S. trade is so worldwide in scope, the best chance for Mr. Trump to keep his campaign promises to turn U.S. trade policy into an engine of domestic growth and employment rather than of offshoring depends on two additional steps. The first is following through with his threat to impose stiff tariffs on automotive imports from the rest of the world. The second is expanding his already substantial tariffs on imports from China.

As I’ve explained repeatedly, that fatal NAFTA flaw entailed the treaty’s failure to provide significant incentives to producers outside the free trade zone to supply U.S., Canadian, and Mexican customers with goods – mainly in the automotive sector – produced in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, not in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere.

USMCA does create stricter “rules of origin” governing trade in vehicles and parts – by phasing in increases in the share of inputs provided from inside North America that vehicles and parts will need to contain in order to qualify for tariff-free treatment when traded among the three countries. The new treaty also mandates that a certain percentage of these products be made in factories paying workers wages much higher than prevail in Mexico currently. But the penalties non-North American producers face for ignoring these requirements, at least for duty-free treatment in the U.S. market, by far North America’s largest, are exactly the same sorely inadequate tariffs imposed by NAFTA – 2.5 percent for passenger cars and nearly all parts, and 25 percent for sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks.

In other words, non-North American companies and entities (such as are found in China) will find it just about as easy to absorb or evade the costs of exporting to rather than investing in North America – through increased subsidies, currency devaluation, or accepting slightly lower profits – as they have for NAFTA’s entire 24-year history.

Automotive-wise, as previously reported in the news media, USMCA does differ from NAFTA in one seemingly important respect:  The Trump administration won the right to increase greatly tariffs on passenger cars, SUVs, and light trucks from Mexico if these shipments to the United States exceed certain levels (1.6 million vehicles) and on auto parts if these shipments exceed $108 billion per year. Interestingly, no such limits are imposed on automotive imports from Canada.

The catch is that these thresholds significantly exceed current American import levels, so they’ll provide no noteworthy relief for U.S. autoworkers and domestic production facilities for the time being.

The good news for these beleaguered American workers and companies is that major incentives to move non-North American production to the continent can still emerge.  But their fate will turn on whether President Trump imposes stiff tariffs on automotive products from outside North America under Section 232 of U.S. trade law, and whether he keeps curbing American trade with China.

Canada and Mexico have won major exemptions in the USMCA from these threatened levies (see here and here for the relevant side letters), but such new barriers to imports from Germany, Japan, South Korea, China, and others should create plenty of new work and sales opportunities for facilities in all three USMCA countries.

Section 232 auto tariffs alone wouldn’t achieve my own favored goal of turning all of North America and its economy into a genuine trade bloc, which would require non-continental industries across the board to supply North America from North America. In one fell swoop, this approach would solve nearly all of America’s longstanding trade problems with all of the aforementioned non-North American countries along with a host of others. But given the prominence of automotive products in the North American trade and broader economic landscape, it would be an important first step. And more China-specific levies would help as well, given the huge and rapidly growing shares of U.S. manufacturing markets grabbed by the People’s Republic in the last 25 years.

To be sure, other features of USMCA look worrisome to me. Principally, the deal does nothing to eliminate the problems caused by the Canadian and Mexican use of value-added taxes (VATs) and America’s lack thereof. These levies serve as hidden barriers to the Canadian and Mexican markets, and hidden subsidies for exports from Canada and Mexico to the United States.

The Trump administration also has granted Canada’s demand to preserve the old NAFTA’s dispute-resolution process, which greatly helps Canada and also Mexico to frustrate U.S. efforts to curb dumped and illegally subsidized imports from those countries.

On the plus side, the agreement contains enforceable prohibitions against currency manipulation – a first for an American trade deal.  And the administration won for the United States the right to withdraw from the trilateral USMCA and substitute a bilateral deal if one of the parties signs a separate trade agreement with a “non-market economy.”  Since that clearly means, “China,” it’s one more barrier to non-North American economies enjoying some of the benefits of the free trade agreement without incurring any of the obligations.   

But the origin rules have always been central to the promise of integrating the three North American economies for truly mutual benefit. And since the auto tariff decision has now become the development that can make or break the effectiveness of these rules, the only grade merited so far by President Trump’s NAFTA rewrite is “incomplete.”

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Will Trump Fall for an Old Chinese Trade Trick?

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Asian financial crisis, Canada, China, currency manipulation, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Reuters, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump, value-added tax, VAT, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Three cheers for Reuters! In a September 7 report that I somehow missed, the news agency provided a valuable reminder about a protectionist trick that China has trotted out once again to offset the impact of new U.S. tariffs. In fact, this ploy can be so important that failing to address it could negate many of the benefits created either by the American levies or by any potential agreement by Beijing to curb or eliminate its predatory economic practices. Worse, this stratagem has created loopholes capable of undermining the impact of other recent Trump trade initiatives, like the effort to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The trick in question entails China increasing the value-added tax (VAT) rebates it provides for exports of literally hundreds of products. VATs, of course, are imposed by countries on any goods and services consumed within their borders (including imports), but rebates (refunds) are typically provided to companies for domestically produced goods that are exported. As a result, VATs act as a tariffs and as export subsidies.

China has long used this system for promoting exports, and according to Reuters has just decided to tweak the policy in order to offset the impact of new and impending American tariffs by increasing the rebates that will be received by exporters of 397 categories of goods. As a result, Chinese entities relying on sales of these products to the United States will be relieved of at least some of the new costs these products will ultimately carry. And the export flows could survive relatively intact.

At this point, you might be wondering why the World Trade Organization (WTO) hasn’t been used to combat this subterfuge. Two related reasons: First, nearly all its member states (along with those of its predecessor organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) use it. And second, no doubt as a result, the contemporary global trading regime has always viewed VATs as purely domestic taxes that lie beyond its purview.

China, incidentally, has successfully employed VATs to keep prospering at other economies’ expense and escape any global opprobrium in one major instance two decades ago. When much of East Asia fell into financial crisis, and export-reliant economies throughout the region were devaluing their currencies in a frantic effort to stay afloat, fears emerged that financially healthier but just as export-dependent China would follow suit to preserve its global market share. After all, Beijing’s dramatic weakening of its yuan several years earlier played a big role in triggering the crisis to begin with.

In 1997 and 1998, however, the peak crisis years, China held the line – and actually received copious praise for good global citizenship. What almost no one noticed was that the Chinese maintained their newly grabbed export competitiveness by boosting VAT rebates.

Today, this move could not only benefit Chinese trade flows, but enable Beijing to realize many of the gains of further currency devaluation without incurring any of the costs – e.g., triggering major new capital flight; increasing the costs of imported inputs still needed by the Chinese manufacturing base to turn out finished goods; and risking a defeat in the global propaganda wars.

Failure to deal adequately with VATs moreover, could endanger President Trump’s objective of improving NAFTA from a U.S. standpoint. For both Mexico and Canada use this system, too, and there’s no public record of American negotiators even raising the subject.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, goes an old adage. It will apply in spades to the Trump administration if it allows its needed efforts to overhaul U.S. trade policy to be weakened by a continued failure to face up to foreign VATs.

Making News: Returning to National Radio to Talk Trump and Trade…& More!

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Brendan Kirby, China, Gordon G. Chang, Lifezette.com, Making News, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, Trump, wages

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show to help provide an update on President Trump’s “trade war” with China and his efforts to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The segment is slated to begin at 10 PM EST and you can listen live on-line at this link to what’s sure to be a lively discussion among John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me.

And as usual, I’ll be posting a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

Also, this past Sunday, Brendan Kirby of Lifezette.com featured my views in a fine, in-depth look he took at the puzzling lag in U.S. wages after nine years of economic recovery – and in fact recent accelerating growth. Here’s the link.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.