(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Chip Derangement Syndrome

Tags

CCP Virus, Chad Bown, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, East Asia, export controls, fabless, Foreign Affairs, Huawei, infotech, lockdowns, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, metals, offshoring lobby, Peterson Institute for International Economics, reopening, semiconductor shortage, semiconductors, supply chains, tariffs, Trade, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As some RealityChek regulars may have noted, I’m spending somewhat less time lately batting down ill-conceived, off-base, and downright incoherent individual books or articles etc on key subjects like trade and globalization, foreign policy, and immigration. It’s not that there’s any less “nonsense out there” these days. Goodness knows there remain enough mouthpieces of the Offshoring-, Forever Wars-, and Cheap Labor-Lobbies in and out of the Mainstream Media paid handsomely cranking out this bilge.

It’s just that they’re clearly so much less important these days, as the American political system has so markedly been ignoring their missives. I mean, even a longtime China coddler and offshoring trade deal supporter like President Biden knows – at least politically – that these stances don’t fly any more. Not that enough progress has been made. But champions of what I think can fairly be called the pre-Trump conventional wisdom in these areas are increasingly giving off those “wrong side of history” vibes – and lashing out at Trump policies in ever more desperate and arguably deranged ways.

I’m making an exception today, however, because Chad P. Bown’s new article in Foreign Affairs blaming the former president significantly for the global semiconductor shortage, appeared in such a (still) influential publication, and is such a thoroughly pathetic example of the marginalized trade policy establishment’s Get Trump and Trumpism obsession.

For the last few years, Bown has served as the MSM’s go-to economist for swipes at Trump’s tariffs and trade wars – every single one of them. As a result, it’s almost inevitable that, with Trump out of power, and Mr. Biden now having retained for months the principal Trump China and metals tariffs – every single one of them – that he’d be looking for new ways to show how mistaken these measures have been.

Although Bown admits that the unprecedened stop-start nature of the CCP Virus-era U.S. economy, the suddently booming demand for microchip-intensive infotech products during the pandemic, and weather-related production disruptions all contributed substantially to the shortage, he also claims that Trump’s trade and tech policies also “squeezed supply” – by definition enough to write about.

His main arguments: First, Trump’s tariffs on semiconductors made in China reduced U.S. imports on net because American purchases from other countries didn’t make up for those chips. Second, his restrictions on the sale of American-made semiconductors to Huawei led the Chinese telecommunications gear giant and other Chinese tech companies to start hoarding chips from everywhere for fear of inadequate overall supplies, and left fewer semiconductors for other users to buy. Third, these curbs on sales of U.S.-made semiconductor to such an enormous customer discouraged chip-makers from all over the world from investing in production capacity in the United States in favor of building factories that could supply China from elsewhere.

But even though, as noted above, Bown admits that other culprits deserve responsibility as well, he not only downplays their effects. He completely ignores the impact of much more fundamental, indeed root, causes. Highly conspicuous, for example, are the consequences of decades of the kinds of offshoring-happy trade policies so strongly supported by Bown and his Offshoring Lobby-funded think tank, the Peterson Institute for International Economics. These policies persuaded U.S.-owned semiconductor manufacturers to move to China and the rest of East Asia much production capacity that could have been installed in America – in large part because they sent to China and the rest of East Asia so much production of the infotech hardware production that buys so many semiconductors.

Nor does Bown mention the dangerously shortsighted decisions of so many U.S.-owned semiconductor companies to eschew manufacturing for a “fabless” business model of researching and designing chips and then farming out the production “foundries” run by separate contract companies – mainly in Asia. Largely as a result, the growth of inflation-adjusted American semiconductor output fell by fifty percent between the U.S. economic expansion of 2001-2007 and the longer expansion of 2009-2019. (See my National Interest article on the subject from last October for the statistics presented above and below.) 

The growth during the latter period (73.68 percent) seems impressive in isolation. But it wasn’t nearly enough to prevent the U.S. share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity from sinking to 12 percent – less than half the percentage in 1990. And it’s not like the growth of this global capacity has been killing it lately, especially considering it’s an archetypical “industry of the future.”

You wouldn’t know this if you if you were relying solely on Bown, but by one key measure, this capacity’s 2013-2019 cumulative expansion (14.29 percent, as shown in the chart below (which comes from the main trade association of the global semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry) was actually slower than the after-inflation growth of total global output of everything (18.29 percent). And if that’s not a surefire formula for a global shortage to me, tariffs and export controls or not, I don’t know what is. Nor do Chad Bown, or the Foreign Affairs editors who published a diatribe that’s factually unhinged even by the rock bottom standards of Mainstream Media coverage of U.S. trade policy.      

Im-Politic: What Even Barr Has Missed About the China Threat

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Center for Strategic and International Studies, China, idea laundering, Im-Politic, Jeanne Whalen, lobbying, Mary E. Lovely, multinational corporations, offshoring, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Scott Kennedy, Steven Zeitchik, think tanks, Trump, Washington Post, William P. Barr

As masterly as Attorney General William P. Barr’s Thursday speech about China’s sweeping “whole-of-society” challenge to the United States was – and “masterly” is an entirely fitting description – it still missed one key danger that’s been created by big Americans businesses’ determination to advance China’s agenda. And conveniently, the nature and importance of this danger was (unwittingly, to be sure) made clear by the Washington Post‘s coverage of Barr’s alarm bell-ringing.

The Attorney General’s address was unquestionably a landmark – and a badly needed one – in the history of U.S.-China relations. The decisive break of course was Donald Trump’s election as President. For decades, American administrations had permitted and even encouraged U.S. multinational corporations and their recklessly shortsighted offshoring- and tech transfer-happy agenda to dominate policymaking toward China. (See here for the Bill Clinton-era origins of this approach.) Sometimes raggedly to be sure, the Trump administration has been reversing decisions that had exponentially increased China’s wealth and therefore military to the detriment of U.S. prosperity and national security.

But Barr’s speech indicates the launch of a new phase in this America First strategy – not only spotlighting corporate activities that keep endangering America, but naming and shaming some of the leading perps.

Especially important was the warning about Chinese leaders “and their proxies reaching out to corporate leaders and inveighing them to favor policies and actions favored by the Chinese Communist Party.” As Barr explained:

“Privately pressuring or courting American corporate leaders to promote policies (or politicians) presents a significant threat, because hiding behind American voices allows the Chinese government to elevate its influence and put a “friendly face” on pro-regime policies.  The legislator or policymaker who hears from a fellow American is properly more sympathetic to that constituent than to a foreigner.  And by masking its participation in our political process, the PRC avoids accountability for its influence efforts and the public outcry that might result, if its lobbying were exposed.”

In other words, Barr was talking about a form of “idea laundering” – the practice of pushing proposals that would benefit special interests first and foremost in ways meant to disguise their source of sponsorship and funding.

I identified one variety of idea laundering way back in 2006 – when I testified to Congress about how prevalent it had become for these offshoring-happy multinationals to pay think tanks to create the illusion that their self-serving objectives were also strongly supported by disinterested experts solely dedicated to truth-seeking. Barr has now pointed out that the multinational executives who have been funding idea laundering through think tank studies and op-eds and the like have also begun serving themselves as lobbyists-on-the-sly for China. In addition, he usefully warned them that they risk running afoul of U.S. laws requiring transparency from any individual or entity shilling for foreign interests.

But I wish Barr had mentioned the think tank version of idea laundering because a reminder of its perils came the day after he spoke, in the form of that Post coverage. Reporters Jeanne Whalen and Steven Zeitchik described and cited verbatim most of Barr’s indictment of corporate behavior. They rightly sought and received reactions from some of the companies fingered (Apple and Disney).

But then they played into the hands of the idea launderers when they claimed that “The attorney general’s warnings drew criticism from some economists, who said he at times exaggerated the threat China poses and downplayed benefits American industry has gained by trading with China….”

That’s surely the case, but the two individuals whose views the Post presented were hardly just any old economists. In fact, one – Scott Kennedy – isn’t even an economist, in the sense that he holds no academic degree in economics. Far more important, though, is that both of these authorities work for and get paid by think tanks that are heavily funded by offshoring multinationals – the Center for Strategic and International Studies (which employs Kennedy) in the academic-y-sounding position of “Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics” and Mary E. Lovely, who is an economist (at Syracuse University) but who’s also a (academic-y-sounding) “Senior Fellow” at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Moreover, it’s crucial to note that both the Center for Strategic Studies and the Peterson Institute are also financed both by foreign multinational companies and even foreign governments with stakes in returning to the pre-Trump U.S. China trade and global trade policy status quo just as great as that of U.S.-owned multinationals. In fact, the Center even lists a contribution in the $5,000-$99,000 annual range from the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, which, like all Chinese think tanks, is an arm of the Chinese regime. (It receives U.S government funding as well – in the greater-than-$500,000 annual neighborhood.)

To repeat a point I’ve made…repeatedly… there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these individual think tankers, the think tanks themselves, businesses, or even foreign governments trying to influence U.S. public policy. But as Barr has noted, there is everything wrong with these activities being conducted deceptively, which is the case with both forms of idea laundering. And the dangers to American democracy and U.S. interests are greatly compounded when journalists who should know better (and the two Washington Post reporters named above are hardly the only examples) help sustain this charade.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Atlantic’s Hatchet Job on Trump’s Trade Policy and Trade Negotiator

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Chad Bown, China, globalization, James Bacchus, Matt Peterson, Merit Janow, multinational companies, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Robert Lighthizer, The Atlantic, Trade, trade war, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I wish I could say that, in the process of ringing out the old year, America is ringing out incompetent or willfully ignorant journalism about U.S. trade policy. But a looooong article just published by The Atlantic on U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer makes painfully clear that that point remains as far away as ever.

The article, by Atlantic Senior Editor Matt Peterson, would deserve quick dismissal simply due to one of its major themes: that Lighthizer, President Trump’s chief trade negotiator, takes a hard line on the issue in general, and on China in particular, because he’s long been in the pocket of the domestic steel industry as one of its principal trade lawyers.

This smear is especially rich because a trade policymaker lionized by Peterson as a strong opponent of such conflicts of interest and consequent paragon of policy virtue – another American trade lawyer named Merit Janow – followed her stint as a senior magistrate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) – by accepting a position as “a charter member of the International Advisory Council of China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation or CIC.” That is, she jumped onto the payroll of the Chinese government.

But more fundamentally troubling about Peterson’s piece is its – sadly, standard – description of the WTO as an institution that defends and promotes the interests of the entire American economy. How so? By creating a U.S.-style court of law that would impartially mete out commercial justice but that could be used especially effectively by American diplomats highly skilled in working with such systems. One genuine contribution made by Peterson is reporting evidence that Lighthizer himself once apparently bought into this argument.

These views, however, completely ignore two related, alternative interpretations of the WTO’s creation that at deserve consideration at least because one of them is so regularly repeated by journalists and WTO supporters. That interpretation portrays the WTO as an arrangement that aimed primarily at restraining America’s ability to combat predatory foreign trade practices by enmeshing the United States in a simple majoritarian legal system in which all countries – including the vast majority of members who relied heavily on such mercantilism for their growth.

Chad Bown of the (pro-WTO) Peterson Institute for International Economics, one of the American media’s “go to” trade policy commentators made this point abundantly clear when he told The New York Times that the main foreign impetus for establishing the WTO was a determination to find ways of resisting America’s (successful) 1980s unilateral efforts to frustrate their trade predation and pry open their markets to U.S.-made goods.

Former WTO official (and U.S. Member of Congress) James Bacchus made a similar point earlier this year when he criticized Lighthizer (and other American economic nationalists) for their belief that the United States was better off under the pre-WTO world trade system.  Why?  Because it left the (democratically elected) U.S. government “free to go on the offence aggressively in trade by taking unilateral trade actions without any international legal constraint.”

The second, related alternative interpretation of the WTO’s creation focuses on the U.S. multinational corporations that dominated U.S. trade policymaking under Mr. Trump’s immediate predecessors: They strongly favored subjecting unilateral American power in trade diplomacy because their overseas operations – especially those geared toward supplying the American market – benefited immensely, often at the expense of domestic competitors, from many of the predatory foreign practices targeted by many American leaders who don’t shill for these offshoring interests. China’s longstanding beggar-its-neighbors currency policies have been only one example.

The Atlantic is rightly proud of its long history of publishing “iconic thinkers” and “covering ideas that matter.” Many more articles like Peterson’s, and it will also be known for hatchet jobs.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Some Surprising New Data on Manufacturing and Trade

Tags

China, IMF, International Monetary Fund, manufacturing, manufacturing jobs, Nicholas Lardy, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Trade, Trade Deficits, trade surpluses, World Bank, World Economic Outlook, {What's Left of) Our Economy

That was some chart in this week’s newest International Monetary Fund (IMF) update on the world economy on how different countries (including the United States) have fared when it comes to increasing or maintaining their manufacturing employment and their manufacturing output. (The detail in the below reproduction is tough to see, but for the original, see p. 5 in the third chapter of the Fund’s April World Economic Outlook.) 

 

Looking at performance for 20 high-income countries and 20 low-income countries, it makes clear that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there’s nothing unusual about national economies boosting manufacturing jobs as a share of total jobs, and manufacturing output as a share of total output, at the same time. So it’s a powerful retort to claims from American globalization cheerleaders that all over the world, in rich and poor countries alike, both manufacturing indicators are bound to fall in relative terms as economies inevitably evolve in more services-oriented directions.

And at the very least, it calls into question the notion that trade balances in manufacturing have little or nothing to do job loss in the sector in particular. For example, according to the chart, 22 of the 40 countries examined have boosted manufacturing as a share of their employment and their real value-added (a measure of output) from 1960 through 2015. And 11 of these were high-income countries, where the conventional wisdom says manufacturing’s economic importance is likeliest to shrink over any significant time frame.

Of these 22 countries, 17 ran surpluses in their combined goods and services trade in 2015. And nine were high-income countries.

Not that trade surpluses are automatic indicators of economic success: This group does include economically stagnant Italy as well as economically collapsing Venezuela. Spain, which experienced a terrible stretch during the last recession, is on this list, too – although it’s been a strong grower more recently. And there’s one country whose failure to qualify sure surprised me: Germany. Nonetheless, the countries that have excelled at manufacturing during this period also include major success stories like Chile, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, and of course China (along with Japan, which is currently in the midst of its best growth stretch in nearly three decades).

Of course, the 1960-2015 time frame is still problematic at best, especially for China – since in 1960 it was still being run by leaders enamored with ideas like making steel in peasants’ backyard furnaces. But more recent comparisons between China and the United States look much more instructive – and supportive of the idea that a strong manufacturing trade performance is a great way to maintain robust manufacturing employment and production – and of its converse.

Let’s examine the post-2002 period – with the baseline chosen because that’s the year China actually joined the World Trade Organization, and began receiving WTO-style protection for its predatory, surplus-building trade practices. And for manufacturing output, let’s use pre-inflation value-added, since I wasn’t able to find inflation-adjusted data for China.

According to World Bank figures, manufacturing by this measure dipped from 31.06 percent of China’s economy in 2002 to 29.38 percent – a 5.72 percent decline. For the United States, between 2002 and 2015 manufacturing value-added as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) fell from 13.74 percent to 12.27 percent. That 10.70 drop-off was nearly twice that of China.

As for employment, Sinologist Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (and no hardliner on China) has compiled Chinese statistics dating from 2003, and covering employment in the country’s cities. They show that manufacturing jobs as a share of this China total rose from 15 percent that year to 20 percent in 2014. In the United States during those years, manufacturing employment as a share of total non-farm jobs (the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American jobs universe), dropped from 11.91 percent to 8.76 percent.

And nowhere have the manufacturing differences between the two economies been greater than in trade flows. For the first year of its WTO membership, China’s goods and services trade surplus (which was mainly in manufacturing) was $30.35 billion. By 2014, it was ballooned to $382 billion. During this period, the American manufacturing trade deficit shot up by just under 74 percent – from $362.64 billion to $629.53 billion.

So the new IMF chart (and related data) by no means ends the debate over whether trade balances impact national manufacturing employment and output. But if I was a globalization cheerleader, I’d sure hope they didn’t attract too much attention.

Im-Politic: The Foreign Governments Funding Think Tank Experts on Trump Tariffs

Tags

aluminum, Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Im-Politic, Peterson Institute for International Economics, steel, tariffs, think tanks, Trade, Trump

With the announcement of the Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum – and the prospect of more trade curbs to come – the news organizations on which Americans rely for accurate and impartial information have understandably turned to private sector specialists for facts and analysis.

What’s much less understandable is that many of these specialists work at Washington, D.C.-headquartered think tanks that receive significant funding from foreign governments – many of whose economies will be profoundly affected by any major changes in U.S. trade policy. Even worse, the press coverage of the Trump tariffs has consistently failed even to mention these conflicts of interest – even though some news outlets have reported on the subject in considerable detail.

To give you an idea of how widespread these conflicts are, here’s a list of the foreign government donors for three major think tanks, drawn directly from their websites, and some figures indicating the often major sums these governments (including groups they fund) have contributed to these organizations’ budgets for the most recent data year available:

 

The Brookings Institution, 2016-17:

$1 million – $1.999999 million

Government of Norway:

$500,000-$999,999

Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade

United Arab Emirates

$250,000-$499,999

The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership

Japan International Cooperation Agency

Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States

$100,000-$249,000

Australian Government, Department of Industry, Innovation, & Science

$50,000-$99,999

Government of Denmark

European Recovery Program, German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy

European Union

Government of Finland

Korea International Trade Association

CAF-Development Bank of Latin America

Department for International Development, United Kingdom

Embassy of France

Japan Bank for International Cooperation

Temasek Holdings

The Korea Foundation

Korea Institute for Defense Analysis

Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

 

Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2016

$25,000-$49,999

Korea Institute for International Economic Policy

Swiss National Bank

Up to $24,999

Central Bank of China, Taipei

European Parliament

Japan Bank for International Cooperation

Korea Development Institute

Korea International Trade Association

Embassy of Liechtenstein

Monetary Authority of Singapore

 

Center for Strategic and International Studies 2016-17

$500,000 and up

Japan

Taiwan

UAE

Academy of Korean Studies

Korea Foundation

$100,000-$499,999

Australia

Denmark

South Korea

Turkey

$5,000-$99,999

Canada

China

France

Liechtenstein

The Netherlands

United Kingdom

Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership

European Development Finance Institutions

Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies

Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Shanghai Institutes for International Studies

Taiwan Foundation for Democracy

 

As I’ve written before, even analysts whose paychecks are wholly or partly written by foreign governments (or other special interests, like offshoring-happy multinational companies) can provide valuable insights.  They also have every right to weigh in on any policy debate they choose.  But unless you believe we don’t live in a world in which money talks, and that this goes double in a national capital, it’s clear that news consumers have an equally important right to know the source of the money behind the views they’re reading about – and that the media is letting its readers, viewers, and listeners down when this information is kept concealed.   

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Establishment’s Case for Free Trade Keeps Weakening

Tags

Center for Global Development, currency manipulation, Dani Rodrik, free trade, Joseph E. Gagnon, Lawrence Summers, non-tariff barriers, Paul Krugman, Peterson Institute for International Economics, protectionism, sovereignty, Trade, trade agreements, trade barriers, transparency, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Although they’ve long enjoyed benefits ranging from lavish financial support to nearly uncritical mainstream media adulation, I felt a twinge of pity this morning for establishment backers of current trade and globalization policies.

As made clear from a new report from one of their leading think tanks and a recent speech from one of their leading individual lights, they’re doubling down on the claims that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the trade liberalization priorities long held by the U.S. government, and that the trade barriers supported by populists and other critics will only backfire on the American and global economies. And as also made clear by the report and speech, they keep fighting a losing intellectual battle.

The report comes from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and addresses the question “Do Governments Drive Global Trade Imbalances?” As emphasized by author Joseph E. Gagnon, the stakes of finding the right answer are towering:

“At current levels, these imbalances will push the net debt of deficit countries gradually toward unprecedented and unsustainable levels….Moreover, the domestic political consequences of persistent trade deficits are already evident in both the United States and the United Kingdom, having contributed importantly to the election of Donald Trump and the outcome of the Brexit referendum….”

In other words, if global trade flows continue getting more lopsided, they could set the stage for a repeat of the kind of global financial crisis they helped foster during the previous decade. And failing to calm populist political waters in the west could tempt key trading powers even more strongly to dabble in economically disastrous protectionism.

So Gagnon makes the case for a feel-good story: These major trade powers, especially the United States,

“have the necessary tools to achieve their stated goal of narrowing current account imbalances. President Trump and some members of his administration have proposed using trade barriers to narrow the US current account (trade) deficit. The data show that trade barriers have very little effect on a country’s trade balance. Fiscal policy and net official flows are the policies that matter for trade balances.”

One problem right at the outset: There’s nothing in the study whatever that explicitly measures the impact of (conventional) trade barriers. But even accepting this unusual methodology, it’s surely significant that he does conclude that “foreign exchange intervention” – i.e., currency manipulation – has an “important” affect on trade balances. That sounds like a trade barrier to me, at least in many instances.

And although fiscal (and related spending) policies aren’t normally considered examples of trade policies, they’ve clearly been used by numerous countries, especially Germany and throughout East Asia, to keep savings rates high, and therefore consumption (and imports) low. Why does Gagnon leave these out?

It’s absolutely true that fiscal and budget policies reflect the choices made by national societies, and therefore economies, and that as such, the presumption should be that they’re entirely legitimate. But at the same time, the nature of such choices can reveal whether these priorities can produce reasonably balanced trade with an economy like America’s – whose priorities on these fronts are substantially different but presumably just as legitimate.

As a result, trade policies that emphasize expanding commerce with countries regardless of their domestic priorities ipso facto can’t help but boost the trade deficit of the freer spending and/or more economically open country. And that description fits decades worth of American trade policies to a tee.

Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s former top White House economic adviser (among many other major government jobs), last month advanced an argument that’s somewhat more sophisticated than Gagnon’s, but no more convincing or useful to policymakers. In a speech to the Center for Global Development, Summers made the standard nod to the “compelling and persuasive case for free trade” and to the follow on view that “erecting tariff or quota barriers to trade between countries is usually a bad idea.”

But then, Summers’ line of argument actually became interesting. He sought to draw a distinction between the (unassailable) idea of free trade on the one hand, and the focus of many recent trade agreements – which he claimed “may be good or they may be bad, but they are not self-evidently and clearly good in the way that free trade is clearly good.” These concerns centered around goals like “securing intellectual property protection for global companies in a wider range of countries” and “achieving access for service companies to a wider range of countries” and “harmonizing rules in areas like safety standards or financial reporting standards.”

Supporters of such measures, he contended, have too often been arrogating

“the prestige of free trade…in support of a rather different agenda of better, more harmonized commercial rules” and expressed support for the view that “the participants in the debate about what constitute better, more harmonized commercial rules are mostly the kinds of people who appear in Davos rather than the kinds of people who work in the companies that are run by the people who appear in Davos.”

It’s hardly new for trade advocates to note critically that recent trade deals have dealt largely with non-trade issues, and more disturbingly, issues that the theory’s originators couldn’t imagine. Many left-of-center opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement nixed (at least for the United States) by President Trump made this very point, and Summers peers such as Dani Rodrik of Harvard University and Nobelist Paul Krugman have echoed these views as well.

But Summers’ indictment of this shift in the trade agenda seems unusually strong, so it’s a great opportunity to pose three major questions that these critiques keep avoiding. First, with standard trade barriers like tariffs whittled down to near-insignificance in most cases, and such non-tariff barriers (NTBs) becoming more popular, how can genuinely free trade be sustained without somehow grappling with the latter?

Second, since the United States maintains relatively few NTBs, since these barriers are easy to identify because they’re typically line items in a completely transparent federal budget, or regulations in other, equally transparent federal documents, and since the world’s NTB champs are known for opaque governing systems that generally hide their barriers effectively, how can the United States adequately safeguard its legitimate interests without threatening to put up or actually erecting its own barriers?

So without the possibility or reality of unilaterally closing off its own market in response, how can the United States avoid being disadvantaged by legalistic systems of harmonization that (understandably but unrealistically) depend on producing evidence for winning redress?

Third, and similarly, there’s no global consensus on what kinds of health and safety regulations are genuine and valid measures to protect the commonweal, and what kinds are designed primarily as trade barriers. Therefore, how – unless again through using the threat or reality of unilateral tariffs – can countries that play it straight (like the United States) adequately safeguard their interests versus the clandestine protectionists?

The only plausible answers to these questions are, “It can’t.” And the sooner globalization’s cheerleaders acknowledge these hard truths and the commonsense measures that logically flow from them, the sooner they’ll start winning back the trust of a public that’s rightly ignoring them.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: With Friends Like This, Today’s World Trade System Doesn’t Need Enemies

Tags

Bill Emmott, Chad Bown, dispute resolution, free trade agreements, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Project-Syndicate.org, The Economist, Trade, Trump, unilateralism, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received about analytical and opinion writing is “Let your adversaries hang themselves with their own words.” So on the eve of Thanksgiving, 2017, I’m especially grateful to Bill Emmott, the former editor-in-chief of The Economist magazine, for making clear why President Trump and other nationalist critics of U.S. trade policy have been exactly right in slamming as a huge mistake America’s decision to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) – the linchpin of the global trade order for the past two-plus decades.

Writing on the Project-Syndicate.org website, Emmott reports that the Trump administration has embarked on a campaign to cripple the operations of the WTO, which went into business at the beginning of 1995 and which possesses unprecedented internationally recognized authority not only to develop rules for governing many kinds of global commerce, but for enforcing them.

As with other efforts to subject countries to some legal-type checks, the ostensible purpose of the WTO was to remove power from the picture when countries negotiated trade arrangements, and especially when they dealt with the disputes over such arrangements that inevitably arise.

Many powerful critiques of the WTO have been advanced by trade policy critics across the spectrum, but I’ve always viewed two interlocking objections as supremely convincing. First, despite its lofty stated legalistic objectives, the WTO has always been as quintessentially a political organization as other international organizations, like the United Nations. Second, the politics of the WTO has always been decidedly anti-American – for the overwhelming majority of its members depended heavily on amassing big trade surpluses with the United States in order to generate adequate growth for themselves.

So Washington’s decision (backed by Democratic and Republican leaders alike of course) to spearhead the WTO’s creation and become a founding member achieved none of its promised major advantages for the U.S. economy (an impartial forum for handling trade disputes), and saddled the country with all of the major drawbacks of such a system (nullifying most of its ability to use its immense market power to resolve most of these disagreements favorably).

And wouldn’t you know it? Emmott, whose former publication was created in the mid-19^th century precisely to advocate for so-called free trade principles, strongly agrees! As he wrote in an essay yesterday:

“With the WTO essentially out of the picture, the US will launch a new initiative to strike bilateral deals on trade rules – an approach that Trump advocated in his APEC [Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum] speech. Given that the US remains a vital market for most exporters, such an initiative will have clout.”

Even Emmott’s suggestion that these U.S. moves will fail unwittingly confirms the case that American leverage will secure the best possible outcomes for Americans. “Asian and European countries,” he writes, “should be preparing for the worst by negotiating their own trade agreements with one another to preempt American mercantilism. After all, taking the initiative to boost trade and other commercial contacts is the best way to resist a trade war.”

What the author apparently misses is that the United States is such “a vital market for most exporters” precisely because the latter countries simply don’t believe in opening their economies to others’ goods and services any more than is absolutely necessary. It’s entirely possible that the dramatically altered circumstances created by new unilateralist U.S. policies could imbue these mercantile economies with some free trade religion. But decades- – and in some cases, centuries- – old approaches generally don’t die so easily. Moreover, if such market-opening did indeed take place, and it could be adequately monitored and enforced, why wouldn’t the United States want to take part?

Until then, however, it would make the most possible sense for Washington to proceed along the unilateralist lines Emmott dreads. For thanks in large measure to its transparent political system and strong rule-of-law tradition, the reciprocal market-opening promises offered by America in bilateral trade diplomacy will be much more credible than those made by Japan, or China, or Germany, or other major protectionist economies. The days of selling the United States much more than they buy from it would come to an end. But genuinely intelligent foreign leaders will recognize that receiving a half a loaf from dealing with Washington on this new basis is the best trade bet they can realistically hope for.

As for countries that stubbornly refuse (possibly egged on by free trade zealots like Emmott) the United States – with its considerable present degree of self-sufficiency and matchless potential for much more – will be more than capable of shrugging its shoulders and moving on.

Incidentally, as RealityChek regulars may recall, Emmott isn’t the first globalization cheerleader unintentionally to reveal that the WTO was a pig in a poke for U.S. economic interests, and indeed was created expressly to neuter American power. Chad Bown, a former World Bank economist now with the Offshoring Lobby-funded Peterson Institute for International Economics, handed trade policy critics, and the American people, a similar gift just last August.

Im-Politic: Mainstream Media Again Foster NAFTA Myths and Think Tank Corruption

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Canada, donors, Google, Im-Politic, Japan, Korea, Mainstream Media, media, Mexico, NAFTA, Navistar, New America, North American Free Trade Agreement, offshoring, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Reuters, tariffs, think tanks, Trade, trucks, Trump, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson Center

Although Donald Trump’s presidency might still turn out to be a watershed for U.S. trade policy, it already seems clear that trade policy coverage from the Mainstream Media will remain uniformly terrible, and unmistakably slanted toward the conventional approach that candidate Trump promised to disrupt. As recent articles from Reuters and the Washington Post remind, the bias takes both subtle and non-subtle forms.

Both pieces deal with the talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which have resumed in Washington, D.C. this week. Despite its failings, Reuters correspondent Sharay Angulo’s article on the talks’ possible impact on multinational truck manufacturers contained some important information. For instance, she reported that 98 percent of the trucks exported from Mexico are sent to the United States and Canada – which oddly precedes a claim that most of these truck companies “have a similar strategy of building in Mexico to export to countries other than the United States.”

We also learn from her that more than half the “original parts” of U.S. firm Navistar’s Mexico-made trucks come from the United States and Canada (although this information comes from Navistar itself, and like other company-specific information re NAFTA, offshoring, and trade in general, so far can’t be independently verified). In addition, the article (again citing Navistar statistics) states that the firm exports fewer than half its Mexico-made vehicles to the United States – which seems to differentiate it sharply from its competitors.

Where the report veers sharply from the rational is in its unquestioning acceptance of the claim that “Higher tariffs on imports or reduced trade flows would raise the cost of production and of exporting to the United States. That would make trucks more expensive for all Navistar’s customers….”

What’s somehow missed by the author (and all the “experts” consulted by Reuters who allegedly agreed with this contention) is that this result would unfold only if Mexico retaliated against any Trump administration tariffs on its exports to the United States with new levies of its own that would hit manufacturers like Navistar. Given Mexico’s heavy dependence on parts imports to support its export-oriented truck and other industrial production, why on earth would its government take this step? Such retaliation would “raise [its] costs of production and of exporting to the United States” yet higher. Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

Also missed by Angulo – how higher Mexico production costs could well achieve Mr. Trump’s revamp objectives by shifting truck manufacturing back to the United States. She’s correct in suggesting that low tariffs on Mexico exports to the United States may not suffice. But a logical (and seemingly obvious) implication is simply that higher tariffs will be needed.

The less subtle form of bias came in an October 6 Washington Post article previewing the latest NAFTA talks, and although it’s a more common variety, it was especially flagrant. One big problem is the authors’ (and their editors’) decision, with a single exception, to quote only critics of the Trump administration’s efforts.

Thus, readers are presented with the perspective of a Canadian trade lawyer, a former Mexican trade negotiator who now works for a D.C.-based consulting firm with many offshoring companies as clients, a Mexican business lobbyist who officially advises his country’s NAFTA negotiators, a former Canadian official, a former Obama administration economic aide, and four specialists from two Washington, D.C.-based think tanks.

A second big, and related problem – at a time when the intellectual integrity of such think tanks has come under a positively stygian cloud due to the uproar over New America’s firing of several researchers who ran afoul of big donor Google, the Post piece makes absolutely no mention that both of these organizations depend heavily on contributions from both companies and foreign government organizations with vital stakes in maintaining the NAFTA status quo.

For example, the latest info from the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center (itself a recipient of U.S. taxpayer funding), base for one of the specialists showcased in the piece, reveal that the organization receives contributions from no less than six big Mexican companies, plus Wal-Mart (a big importing business) and the main trade association of the American pharmaceutical industry – which manufactures in Mexico for export to the United States.

The Canada Institute, where the other quoted Wilson Center specialist is based, lists the Canadian government as a donor.

As for the other think tank relied on by the Post for (supposedly objective) expertise, the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), among its U.S. and foreign multinational funders that produce in Mexico for export to the United States are Toyota, GE, Caterpillar, IBM, Ford, GM, Samsung, John Deere, Procter & Gamble, and Mitsubishi.

PIIE also takes contributions from three foreign government entities that help their countries’ companies engage in export-oriented operations in Mexico: the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, the Korea Development Institute, and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

In addition, in recent years, the Peterson Institute has also cashed big checks from Mexican building materials giant Cemex, and from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – the organizational spearhead of America’s corporate offshoring lobby.

As I’ve repeatedly emphasized, the point here is neither that these think tanks’ findings and opinions lack merit, or they or their donors have no right to weigh in on important trade and other policy debates. It’s that these ostensible research groups should make clear who’s paying their rent – and that if they continue with what I’ve called deceitful idea laundering on behalf of their sponsors, the press should call them out.

The Mainstream Media, however, keeps failing to fulfill this responsibility – which can only deepen already profound suspicions that it’s abandoning its watchdog role and turning into an establishment lapdog instead.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The World Trade Organization Unmasked

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Chad Bown, China, Foreign Affairs, Keith Bradsher, multinational companies, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Ronald Reagan, Section 301, The New York Times, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It isn’t every day that Washington’s offshoring-happy economic policy establishment reveals one of its dirtiest secrets in public (unwittingly, of course!). So anyone – and especially U.S. political leaders – with any interest at all in trade, globalization, manufacturing, employment, and related issues (e.g., the economy, getting re-elected) urgently needs to read the final paragraphs of Tuesday’s New York Times article reporting that President Trump will soon greatly ramp up trade pressure on China.

But it’s vital to read the passage intelligently, because the point is made in in the kind of Washington-speak intended to conceal its real meaning.

As Times reporter Keith Bradsher wrote, a key feature of Mr. Trump’s alleged new China strategy will be the use of a provision of America’s national trade law system called “Section 301.” It’s a provision that grants a president broad authority to respond with punitive tariffs to foreign trade practices considered to be damaging the U.S. economy in “unfair” ways, and to respond pretty quickly. (It’s still not nearly quick enough for me, but that’s a separate issue.) And as he made clear, it’s a trade law provision with a noteworthy history. In Bradsher’s words:

“The United States used Section 301 energetically against other countries during the Reagan administration and the administration of President George Bush. Mr. Lighthizer [the current chief U.S. Trade negotiator] was a deputy United States trade representative in the Reagan administration and has been an advocate of shielding the American industrial base from government-assisted foreign competitors.

“But the cases then thoroughly antagonized America’s trading partners.

“‘It was really the aggressive uses of this in the late 1980s and early 1990s that prompted the rest of the world to set up the dispute resolution system’ of the World Trade Organization [WTO], said Chad P. Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics here.”

Bown – whose Peterson Institute home is heavily funded by the offshoring lobby – no doubt meant his statement to reinforce the standard establishment description of and rationale for the WTO-centered world trade system that’s been in existence for the last quarter century. That is, the international economy had too long operated on a law of the jungle basis that bred continual and dangerous conflict, and that in an act of enlightened self-interest, the world’s economies recognized these perils and created a global trade court that would mete out justice according to objective legal standards and thereby serve every countries’ long-term interests.

In fact, Bown wound up confirming a very different description of the WTO and the motives behind its creation that I have advanced since it was first proposed: It’s an arrangement supported by America’s trade partners in order to prevent the United States from using its matchless market power to promote and defend its legitimate international economic interests. P.S. – because U.S.-based multinational companies supply the American market from so many overseas factories, undercutting Washington’s unilateral power to restrict imports mattered crucially to them, too.

For the Reagan-era uses of Section 301 cases that Bown (and Bradsher) mention were noteworthy not mainly because they were “energetic” or “aggressive”. (Unless you view most of America’s trade partners as snowflakes or strong champions of the rule of law.) These 301 uses were noteworthy because they worked. All the evidence is contained in this article I published in Foreign Affairs in 1994. And as Bown made clear, this success was completely unacceptable to “the rest of the world” – most of which, like China, relies heavily on selling to America in order to grow and develop satisfactorily. As a result, these economies, along with the multinationals, became convinced that handcuffing the United States was essential. And official Washington dutifully went along.

Although Section 301 is still on the books, it’s been U.S. policy under Democratic and Republican presidents alike to avoid it in favor of WTO procedures (just as most foreign governments, including allies, and the multinational companies want). And legally speaking (a term I use advisedly when it comes to the WTO and international law generally), that approach seems to dovetail with WTO rules.

But the Trump administration appears to be considering the contention that the United States retains the unfettered authority to use 301 at least in certain instances. The administration further seems confident that, whether it’s right or wrong on the law, the WTO membership collectively will shrink from a frontal challenge for fear of completely destroying a dispute-resolution system that still might serve its interests well going forward – at least much of the time. 

Nevertheless, the reports of a Trump course change on China trade – which could eventually be broadened – are still just reports. All that’s certain now is that, if they’re accurate, the president will wind up showing the his own compatriots and the rest of the world what a real America-First trade policy would look like.

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Peterson Pro-Globalization Study Only Deserves a “Nice Try”

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China, Financial Crisis, Gary C. Hufbauer, Global Imbalances, globalization, Great Recession, Larry Summers, manufacturing, Peterson Institute for International Economics, productivity, secular stagnation, technology, Trade, trade agreements, trade liberalization, trade policy, World Trade Organization, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Peterson Institute’s new study of the benefits to Americans of globalization apparently leaves no doubt that the nation should promptly forget about any retreat from conventional trade liberalization policies and resume its aggressive pursuit of new trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Or does it? A close reading of the report reveals gaping holes in these claims.

According to authors Gary C. Hufbauer and Zhiyao Lu, between 1950 and 2016, “trade expansion” has enriched the overall U.S. economy by $2.1 trillion, and boosted America’s output per head and per household by just over $7,000 and $18,000, respectively. Even better, lower-income households probably gained the most (since the greatest trade liberalization progress has been made in the goods that comprise so much of their consumption).

Yet the phrase quoted in that previous paragraph points to the first big hole in the Peterson findings. “Trade expansion’s” benefits, the authors specify, entails much more than either signing new trade deals or otherwise reducing trade barriers. It also includes “technological advances in transportation and communications [that] have drastically slashed the economic distance between countries.”

Of course, there’s been a lot of the latter over the last 66 years. What share of expanded trade’s benefits has come from trade liberalization policy decisions and what share from that technological progress? Darned if the authors know.

The long time frame, in turn, reveals a second major problem with the central argument. Obviously over that last two-thirds of a century, the world economy, and America’s position in it, have changed in numerous and fundamental ways. One prominent example: For the first roughly three post-World War II decades, the United States was the only fully intact developed country. How could trade liberalization not have been a major net benefit? America produced countless products that the rest of the world desperately needed. And none of its important industries faced significant import competition until the 1970s. That doesn’t sound much like current circumstances.

And in fact, Hufbauer and Lu acknowledge this problem, noting, for example, that “compared to previous decades, increased trade since 2003 has not delivered substantial gains.” At this point, however, their analysis gets dicey. For example, they speculate that that low recent payoff resulted partly from “the lack of fresh policy liberalization on a large scale (the failure of the Doha Round)….” But that period actually saw a hugely important liberalization initiative completed – China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. And don’t forget the numerous free trade deals signed by the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, including with South Korea’s very large economy.

Moreover, although Hufbauer and Lu rightly note that the financial crisis and Great Recession also have marked the post-2003 period, they claim that “The decade that experienced the greatest gains from increased trade was 1970 to 1980.” That decade witnessed no less than two recessions (three if you count the 1980 downturn).

Undaunted, the authors contend that returning to the trade liberalization policy course will result in even more American wealth creation. But here’s where their discussion of the post-2003 period fails badly – and unmistakably. They never mention that, thanks largely to that aforementioned boost to incredibly lopsided U.S.-China the first decade of this century produced the greatest U.S. trade deficits and associated global economic imbalances in world history. They ended in the financial crisis and the nation’s worst economic downturn since the Great Recession.

Since America’s main trade partners – including China – seem either just as export-dependent, and/or just as import-and consumption-phobic as ever, it’s difficult to understand why a return to conventional trade diplomacy, combined with the cumulative and often lagged impact of past deals (as noted by Hufbauer and Zu) wouldn’t end in near-catastrophe again.

Another big problem: Former Treasury Secretary and chief Obama economic adviser Larry Summers, along with many others, worry that the United States has fallen into an economic trap they call “secular stagnation.” They speculate that the nation has become so incapable of generating healthy growth that it’s grown dependent on blowing up credit and consumption bubbles to at least produce (misleading) signs of economic life – and that these bubble’s inevitable bursting keeps creating financial crises and serious slumps. Do Hufbauer and Zu believe that the sandbagging of domestic manufacturing (which hasn’t grown in real terms since 2006) due to import competition and offshoring isn’t partly to blame? 

Finally, and similarly, American leaders have finally recognized that the economy is experiencing a major productivity growth slowdown. Can trade liberalization’s real economic impact be measured without considering the effect on productivity of allowing all that trade damage to manufacturing, which historically has led the nation in productivity growth?  

It’s definitely encouraging that a major think tank like the Peterson Institute is looking in detail at globalization’s impact on America’s economy.  Let’s hope that its next effort reflects some actual thinking.