(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Two New Must-Read Reports on U.S. Trade Policy

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African Americans, Ana Swanson, China, Donald Trump, globalization, imports, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, intellectual property, ITIF, Jobs, manufacturing, mercantilism, minorities, non-market economy status, protectionism, Section 337, The New York Times, Trade, trade law, U.S. International Trade Commission, USITC, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Good things just came in twos on the U.S. trade policy front, in the form of two separate reports that spotlighted a major, vastly under-appreciated result of America’s approach to the international economy for many decades, and that proposed an excellent new idea for shielding U.S.-based workers and businesses from Chinese (and some other foreign) predatory trade practices.

The first study was released November 14 by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and alertly covered by Ana Swanson of The New York Times. The USITC researchers usefully reviewed the academic literature on trade policy’s impact on various U.S. population groups and found that overall, and came to two major conclusions. First, “in the face of trade shocks [like the soaring levels of imports from China that followed Washington’s decision in the 1990s to expand greatly bilateral economic ties], Black and other Nonwhite workers [fared] worse than their White counterparts.” Second, “import competition had a large and disproportionately negative effect on wages of minority workers.”

The reasons, the USITC stressed, were many and varied, and included discrimination in hiring and firing practices and the generally lower education levels of minority groups, which has tended to concentrate them in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors that have been vulnerable the longest to penny-wage competition from China and other developing countries. But one conclusion that shone through was the historic importance of manufacturing generally – including the kind of heavy manufacturing found in the Midwest, to minority prospects for economic progress.

And these conclusions will come as no surprise to RealityChek regulars, as the harm done to minority communities by a trade policy that I’ve long argued has been offshoring- and import-friendly has been the subject of two posts from several years back. (See here and here.) But as the X indicated, and the USITC report emphasized, too many gaps remain in the data currently available and too much of what can be accessed is too poorly structured to create a genuinely satisfactory picture. So how about USITC folks getting on the horn to their Census Bureau counterparts to get cracking?

One other point worth mentioning (which the USITC understandably didn’t include): The first recent President who tried at all to change the trade policies that apparently have hit U.S. minorities hardest was one Donald Trump – who’s still being widely pilloried as a white supremacist.

The second, more forward-looking report was released Monday by the Infomation Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and recommended a creative way to use U.S. trade law to shut out of the American market products whose competitiveness has benefited from “unfair trade practices in non-market, non-rule-of-law economies such as China.”

The trade law provision ITIF would employ is called Section 337. The reason? Unlike other U.S. trade law measures, rather than authorize the imposition of tariffs on imports that are sold to Americans at below-market prices (dumping) or enjoy certain kinds of subsidies, or profit from intellectual property theft (the main alleged trade crimes addressed by American trade law), in certain circumstances Section 337 authorizes completely banning U.S. imports from foreign entities shown to have profited from such practices.

ITIF proposes to increase greatly the number of these circumstances, especially for cases not involving intellectual property, for transgessions by China and other economic rogues.

Perhaps most important, in cases involving such outlier countries, it would eliminate the (already weakened) requirement that a plaintiff domestic company or industry has been injured by predatory trade practices. (In the U.S. trade law system, plaintiffs not only need to demonstrate that an outlawed practice exists, but that it has seriously harmed them.) As ITIF argues,

“It should be irrelevant if the domestic company is harmed in the here and now. The point is that the unfair practices should not be rewarded, period. The other point is that all too often, especially in technologically complex industries, by the time harm is determined it is too late: The company has suffered irreversible decline in its competitive position. Adjudicating blame becomes a coroner’s inquest over dead U.S. companies.”

Two other crucial ways ITIF would lower barriers to winning Section 337 cases involving non-market economies: First, it would spur U.S. trade law to cover foreign governments that provide predatory support for their entities, as well as specific foreign entities themselves. This improvement matters a lot because in so many instances (for example, in every single instance of Chinese transgressions), American businesses and workers are facing an entire national system aimed at creating advantages having nothing to do with free market forces. As a result, U.S. plaintiffs typically wind up facing a defendant with ultimately much deeper pockets, and the high costs of American trade lawyering and the uncertain chances of success deter many from going this route to begin with.

Second, current U.S. trade law implicitly assumes that the damage inflicted by foreign trade predation is limited to a plaintiff company or industry. But given all the linkages among industries nowadays, that view is way too narrow, and can leave the entire economy exposed to much wider-ranging and long-term damage.

To remedy both problems, ITIF would also entitle Washington to take up their causes by permitting any U.S. government agency to file a trade case against a non-market economy.

I’ve got a few bones to pick with these ITIF recommendations. For example, damaging trade predation is by no means confined to China. Many economies that it would let off the hook, especially in East Asia, operate national systems of protection and predation, too. At the same time, as the report suggests, this approach could induce the kind of international cooperation that would increase by orders of magnitude the price China – clearly a culpit in a class by itself – would pay for what ITIF rightly calls its “economic aggression.”

Moreover, the new trade law regime wouldn’t encompass “multinational firms operating in China.” That’s an awfully big loophole, not only because it’s these companies (including U.S.-owned companies) send stateside lots of products that benefit from China’s mercantilism, but because taking advantage of these predatory practices has been a prime reason for moving their factories to China to begin with (as well as lying behind their support for admitting China into the World Trade Organization, and thereby providing these exports with a vital layer of international legal protection against effective, unilateral responses from Washington).

But in the name of making sure the perfect doesn’t prevent the good, I can support this policy, too (at least as a start). And because ITIF’s proposals would go far toward adjusting the decades-old U.S. trade law system to recent global economic reality, I hope both major paties in Washington get behind it ASAP.

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Phony “Industry’s” Phony Case Against Solar Tariffs

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China, clean energy, Commerce Department, dumping, green energy, innovation, manufacturing, misinformation, renewable energy, solar energy, solar panels, Southeast Asia, subsidies, tariffs, trade law, transshipment, {What's Left of) Our Economy

What a disgraceful scandal a leader of America’s renewable energy industry just spotlighted! The main evidence presented for imposing steep tariffs on some imports of solar panels has been disavowed by a main source of that evidence!

Except the real scandal is the misinformation-y nature of this claim – which is becoming par for the course for certain supporters of a faster transition to a clean energy-dominated economy..

Let’s begin at the beginning. On March 28, the Commerce Department, one of two federal agencies responsible for administering the U.S. trade law system, agreed to investigate charges by a California-based manufacturer of panels that factories in Southeast Asia are being used by China to circumvent the tariffs that began to be imposed in 2012 on panels and key components made in the People’s Republic. The levies aimed to offset China’s practice of selling these panels at prices far below production costs not because of market forces, but because of subsidies for the manufacturers.

But tariffs to counter this predatory tactic, also called dumping, can sometimes be circumvented by two types of schemes that are also sanctionable by U.S. trade law. Under the first, called transshipment, the guilty parties send their finished goods to other foreign countries, where they’re re-labeled and sent off for final sale in America. Under the second, the guilty parties send the parts and components of finished products to factories in other foreign countries, where they’re assembled and then exported to the United States.

It’s the second practice that formed the basis for this latest circumvention allegation, and as standard in trade law cases, the lawyers for the U.S. plaintiff – a company called Auxin Solar – tried to persuade the Commerce Department to probe whether circumvention was occuring with a brief containing evidence they’d gathered. This is the request approved on March 28, and the investigation is still ongoing.

In an op-ed article yesterday afternoon, though, Gregory Wetstone of the American Council on Renewable Energy made a bombshell accusation. Writing in TheHill.com, Wetstone contended that the research company whose findings Auxin’s lawyers heavily relied on to prove their charges claimed that some of their key data had been used inaccurately.

The lawyers attempted to show circumvention by citing findings from the research firm BloombergNEF documenting that fully 70 percent of the value of the solar panels imported into the United States from some plants in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam came from China. If true, this finding would strongly confirm Auxin’s position that the panels were little more than products sent in pieces from China to Southeast Asia, to be snapped together for shipment to the United States – that is, that the anti-China tariffs had indeed been circumvented.

But according to BloombergNEF, the 70 percent figure only referred to the “cash cost” of the panel inputs. Left out were the upfront capital costs of building the Southeast Asian factories themselves – which they argued made clear that these facilities performed the kind of genuine manufacturing of the imported materials that in turn absolved them of the circumvention charge. In trade law terms, the parts and components and other inputs supposedly underwent substantial transformation, and were not simply disassembled pieces of final products.

As should be clear to anyone familiar with manufacturing, though, the scale of the investment needed to build a factory has no intrinsic relationship to the nature of the work it performs. Moreover, it’s just as reasonable to view the upfront investment as a one-time cost required to launch a simple assembly operation aimed at lasting for many years. So the longer this ruse continues, the greater the importance of the cost of the panel inputs.  

At the same time, plaintiff Auxin’s case doesn’t rely solely or even mainly on reason, or on the 70 percent figure however it’s interpreted. It doesn’t even rely solely or even mainly on trade data showing that remarkably soon after the original tariffs were placed on the Chinese-made solar cells, Chinese shipments to the United States nosedived, and shipments from the four Southeast Asian countries began skyrocketing. Nor does it rely solely or significantly on additional trade data showing that these countries’ imports of Chinese-made solar panel parts, components, and materials have also soared, often exponentially, over the last decade.

Instead, the brief also presents abundant evidence — that’s never been challenged by the tariff opponents — that many of the new Southeast Asian factories exporting so many solar panels to the United States themselves are Chinese-built or -acquired, and therefore -owned. For example:

>”Jinko Solar Group is a producer of solar products, including silicon ingots, wafers, solar cells, and modules, with its production predominantly based in China. After imposition of the [anti-dumping tariffs] in 2015, Jinko Solar built a solar cell and module processing facility in Penang, Malaysia.”

>”JA Solar launched a solar cell processing facility in Penang, Malaysia in 2015. JA Solar produces ingots and wafers in its Chinese facilities. When the company first started exporting solar cells from Malaysia, the company stated that ‘raw materials such as silicon wafers were being imported from China . . . .’”

>”LONGi owns and operates a wholly owned facility in Malaysia. Li Zhenguo, President of Longi Green Tech, touted LONGi’s Malaysia factory as ‘mainly targeting the U.S. market,’ recognizing that ‘Chinese solar products are imposed by about 150% import tariffs by the U.S. {so} {i}t’s almost impossible for China-made products to be sold there.’”

>A company representative has stated that “Trina Solar supplies U.S. orders from Thailand (as opposed to from China). Additionally, the Chairman and CEO of Trina Solar stated that Trina Solar’s projects in the pan-Asia region align the company with the Chinese government’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative.”

>Suzhou Talesun Solar Technology has directly cited the solar tariffs “as the reason for its Thai facility’s existence by stating that it ‘seized the chance to break through the U.S. market through Thai production capacity.’ Talesun’s company website markets its ability to circumvent the orders on CSPV cells and modules from China: ‘with our factories in China and Thailand, we offer a solution adapted to markets affected by anti-dumping laws such as the United States or Europe.’”

>LONGi Green Tech’s president “touted LONGi’s Vietnam factory as ‘mainly targeting the U.S. market,’ recognizing that shipments from China cannot compete based on existing tariffs.”

>”According to the company’s blog, one reason why Boviet’s [an affiliate of Chinese entity Boway] assembly is based out of Vietnam is because ‘Vietnam is not a U.S. listed Anti-dumping and Countervailing region. No tariffs influence Boviet’s U.S. business, and those cost-savings ultimately trickle down to the buyer.’ Boviet Solar also openly advertises that it sources glass for its solar modules from China.”

>”Chinese solar cell manufacturer ET Solar has reported that it was transferring 300 MW of cell capacity from China to be assembled in Cambodia, where it will also assemble modules to target the U.S. market.”

Somehow Hill op-ed author Wetstone and the alternative energy businesses he helps represent missed all of this. Not that anyone should be surprised. Because for many years they’ve been deceptively describing as the U.S. “solar energy industry” a sector that overwhelmingly consists of companies that install solar power systems for homes, businesses, and utilities.

Certainly they create American jobs and facilitate whatever clean energy transition is proceeding. But this sector generates little value or innovation or productivity growth for the U.S. economy. And it has about as much in common with solar manufacturers as nursing home operators have with the cutting-edge American pharmaceutical industry, or as taxi or ride-sharing companies have with U.S.automakers. Therefore, where the solar panels they stick on American roofs and emplace in lots and other vacant or cleared space are concerned, the cheaper the better, no matter where they come from — including China.

In other words, the U.S. “solar energy industry’s” case against tariffs on Southeast Asian panels fails not only on legal and factual grounds (because circumvention of the China levies is so clearly happening). It fails on policy grounds – except for those who don’t mind much of America’s clean energy future, and all the economic and technological and climate benefits it can create, being made by a hostile dictatorship. No wonder these companies and their leaders are so dependent on spreading misinformation to persuade Washington to lift the solar tariffs.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: New Productivity Data Further Debunk “Tariffs Hurt” Claims

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aluminum, aluminum tariffs, China, durable goods, fabricated metals products, inputs, Labor Department, labor productivity, manufacturing, metals, metals tariffs, multi-factor productivity, productivity, steel, steel tariffs, tariffs, Trade, trade law, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The Trump administration’s announcement last Friday of new tariffs on some metals-using manufactures imports was greeted with the predictable combination of chuckles and gloating from the economists, think tank hacks, and Mainstream Media journalists who keep insisting that all such trade curbs are self-destructive whenever they’re imposed.

If the critics bothered to look at the new official data on multi-factor productivity, however, they’d stop their victory laps in their tracks. For the Labor Department’s latest report on this broadest productivity measure utterly trashes their claims that the tariffs slapped on metals in early 2018 – which unofficially launched the so-called Trump trade wars – have backfired by undercutting most domestic American manufacturing.

In fairness, the Trump administration itself gave the trade and globalization cheerleaders lots of evidence for their triumphalism. Specifically, the levies were justified with statistics showing that various categories of goods made primarily of tariff-ed steel and aluminum had seen major surges of imports since the duties began. The obvious conclusion? Foreign-based producers of these products were capitalizing on their cheaper metals available to their factories to undersell their U.S.-based competition.

As a result, Mr. Trump decided to tariff some of these final products, too – to erase the advantage created for imports from less expensive steel and aluminum.

So in one sense, it’s tough to blame tariff critics for feeling vindicated about predictions that the metals levies might boost the metals-producing sectors themselves, but injure the far larger metals-using sectors. Ditto for their warnings that in an economy with so many connected industries, protection for one or a few would inevitably spur calls for such alleged favoritism by others, threatening a consequent loss of efficiency for all of manufacturing and even the entire economy.

Examine the issue in more detail, though, and you see that it’s entirely possible to arrive at radically different conclusions. For example, the new tariffs appear to be imposed on a limited set of products, and none of them (e.g., nails, tacks, wires, cables, even aluminum auto stampings) qualifies as a major industry. In other words, the chief metals-using industries, like motor vehicles and parts overall, aerospace, industrial machinery (many of which have been complaining loudly about the metals tariffs, even though their overall operational costs have been barely affected) were left out.

Finally in this vein, and as the critics imply, the new Trump tariffs also make the case for trade curbs on any final products whose significant inputs receive duties. Why indeed strap otherwise competitive domestic producers with higher prices for materials, parts, and components? This practice has been a major flaw in the U.S. trade law system, which has prioritized legal over economic and industrial considerations, since its founding. And in fact, my old organization, the U.S. Business and Industry Council, has been urging this reform since at least 2008.

Even better – to prevent cronyism from influencing such trade policy decisions, impose a uniform global tariff on all manufactures, or all non-energy goods.

But it’s just as important to point out a gaping hole in the longstanding argument that cheap imported inputs (including subsidized, and therefore artificially cheap imported inputs) are essential for the overall global competitiveness of U.S. domestic manufacturing. And the hole has been opened (or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, reopened, given this previous RealityChek analysis of earlier data) by those new multi-factor productivity statistics.

They only go through 2018 (such time lags explain why multi-factor productivity trends aren’t followed as closely as labor productivity trends). But they’re the broader of the two productivity measures, as they gauge the effect of many inputs other than hours worked. And via the table below, they make clear that even the wide open access domestic manufacturers enjoyed to artificially cheap metals and other imported inputs have played absolutely no evident role in improving industry’s health. In fact, there’s reason to conclude that the more access domestic industry had to such materials, parts, and components, the less productive it became.

                                                               Total mfg   Durable goods   fabr metals

1990s expansion (91-2000):                   +23.40%       +38.76%         +4.79%

bubble decade expansion (02-07):          +11.74%      +16.61%          +7.62%

current expansion (10-present):                -4.84%         -0.84%           -4.51%

pre-China WTO (87-2001):                   +22.18%      +37.72%           -3.32%

post-China WTO (02-present):               +6.72%      +17.17%           -2.05%

As usual, the time periods chosen to illustrate these trends consist (with one exception) of recent economic expansions (because they enable the best apples-to-apples comparisons to be made). And the 1990s expansion is the first one examined because the relevant Labor Department data only go back to 1987. The products chosen consist of all manufactured goods, durable goods industries (the super-category containing most of the big metals users), and fabricated metals products (the most metals-intensive sectors of all).

The table demonstrates that multi-factor productivity growth across-the-board has weakened dramatically from the 1990s expansion through the current – ongoing – expansion. The slowdown between the 1990s expansion and the previous decade’s expansion was moderate (and multi-factor productivity actually grew faster during the second in fabricated metals, though in absolute terms its improvement lagged badly). But during the current recovery, multi-factor productivity growth has been replaced in all three instances by multi-factor productivity decline. And crucially, during none of this time did any of these manufacturing categories face any shortage of imported inputs of any kind – subsidized or not.

Indeed, one event in 2001 greatly increased the supply of subsidized inputs – China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO). For once China joined, the difficulty of using U.S. trade law to keep these Chinese products out of the U.S. economy became much greater.

Yet at the same time, as shown below, productivity growth was considerably weaker after China’s WTO entry than before in manufacturing overall, and in durable goods. And although its performance actually improved in fabricated metals, that industry’s performance was much worse in absolute terms.

Nor does the inclusion of the 2007-2009 Great Recession in the post-2002 China-related data (which violates the “apples-to-apples rule”) seem to have been a game changer – because the worst performances of all in each case, and by a mile, have been registered during the current expansion. Moreover, since the data stop in 2018, those current expansion results are dominated by the period preceding both the Trump metals tariffs and the Trump China tariffs (most of which target industrial inputs, as opposed to final products).

It’s entirely possible that, for various reasons, the multi-factor productivity statistics would have been even worse if not for the widespread availability of cheap imports. Or maybe multi-factor productivity isn’t much of a measure of manufacturing’s health? Both alternative explanations, however, seem pretty far-fetched (especially given the pre- and post-China WTO results).

Much likelier – as I argued in that post linked above – the availability of cheap inputs has helped retard productivity growth by enabling businesses to achieve cost-savings without investing in research and development into new products and especially processes, and without buying more efficient equipment (including software).

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A New China Bill – & Trade Policy Realist? – Worth Watching

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China, currency manipulation, economic nationalism, Fair Trade with China Enforcement Act, foreign direct investment, Gang of Eight, Immigration, Made in China 2025, Marco Rubio, national security, Populism, Republicans, subsidies, tech transfer, Trade, trade law, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

One of the biggest questions surrounding the future of the Republican Party, and in turn of American politics, is how many leading GOP politicians learn the main lessons of the Trump victory in 2016. In my view, these include the political appeal and real-world imperative of a nationalist approach to American economic policy, especially in the realms of international trade and immigration.

President Trump’s capture of even most of his party’s establishment on the latter could not be clearer. But signs of populism’s growing appeal are also emerging in the former, and one of the biggest has just come courtesy of Marco Rubio. In fact, legislation recently introduced by the Florida Republican and Trump rival for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination strongly indicates that, when it comes to the crucial issue of China, Rubio is out-Trumping Mr. Trump.

Rubio’s journey has been a far as it has been high-speed. His voting record on trade policy overall has been awful – at least from an economic nationalist/populist standpoint. In fact, according to the libertarian Cato Institute, the only blemishes on his record so far have come from his support for federal subsidies for sugar – a crop grown in his home state. As a result, in the fall of 2015, I dismissed him as a typical Republican pseudo-hawk on China.

That is, he talked tough about the need to confront China’s expansionism in the East Asia/Pacific region. But he seemed oblivious to how decades of American trade policy had showered the People’s Republic with literally trillions of dollars worth of hard currency, along with cutting-edge technology voluntarily transferred by, and extorted with impunity from, American companies. In other words, he did and said nothing about U.S. decisions that unmistakably had helped China become a formidable military as well as economic power.

Fast forward to this year, and what a change – at least on China. In addition to criticizing President Trump for backing away from his own Commerce Department’s initial decision to all-but shut down the Chinese telecoms firm ZTE for (repeat) sanctions busting, he’s just introduced legislation that represents the most comprehensive effort I’ve yet seen to deal holistically with the intertwined Chinese threats to America’s economy and national security.

Rubio’s “Fair Trade with China Enforcement Act” contains numerous important measures to staunch the flow of money and defense-related tech to China. (Here’s a summary from his office.) Provisions that represent major and needed advancements in America’s strategy are:

> a prohibition on the the voluntary corporate transfer of technology to a wide range of explicitly named technologies subsidized by the Chinese government, including in the Made in China 2025 program aiming to achieve Chinese predominance in numerous economically and militarily critical technologies. That is, Rubio recognizes that tech extortion (conditioning access to the Chinese market on a company’s willingness to share knowhow with Chinese partners) isn’t the only way that Beijing has been closing the tech gap with the United States. American companies seeking to curry favor with China on their own, or simply recognizing the importance of locating R&D and related activities in close proximity to their manufacturing, have also fueled China’s power.

> a requirement that U.S. trade law recognize that any Chinese product headed for the American market that’s from an industry mentioned in any Chinese document even related to the Made in China 2025 plan is ipso facto receiving subsidies the kinds of subsidies that these statutes consider illegal; and that this same body of trade law just as automatically assume that such goods are actually injuring or threatening to injure U.S.-based competitors when they enter the American market. Translation into plain English: Rubio’s bill would dramatically lower the bar for imposing tariffs on imports from China deemed to be unfairly traded. Which would be one heckuva lot of imports from China.

> a ban on investors from China owning more than fifty percent of any American company producing goods targeted by Made in China 2025 – which would restrict another major channel of tech transfer to China;

> and a new tax on Chinese investments in the United States – including levies on Chinese purchases of American Treasury debt. The latter measure, in particular, would discourage China from buying excessive levels of U.S. government debt, which keeps China’s yuan weak versus the American dollar and therefore helps to put U.S.-made goods at price disadvantages versus their Chinese made counterparts wherever they compete.

Incidentally, a proposal along these lines was first made, to my knowledge, by Raymond, Howard, and Jesse Richman in their 2008 book Trading Away our Future. So they deserve a big shout-out.

Rubio’s bill isn’t perfect. For example, it should be clear by now that any Chinese entity permitted to bid for American assets is tightly controlled by the Chinese government. Therefore, I would favor banning all such takeovers. Even if existing acquisitions were permitted, Washington would at least be freezing the Chinese state’s economic footprint in the United States, and thereby preventing ever more American businesses from having to compete with rivals whose operations have nothing to do with the free market values the nation rightly values.

In addition, Rubio’s bill says nothing about American tech companies’ growing predilection for investing in Chinese tech “start-ups” and similar entities. Some of these investments are surely extorted, but others seem to be voluntary. But since all of them can help strengthen China’s tech capabilities, they should be banned as well if the recipients have any connection with Made in China 2025.

Finally, Rubio still seems pretty comfortable with the rest of America’s longstanding trade liberalization policies except for the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Florida produce growers. 

At the same time, China policy inevitably shapes so much of trade policy that Rubio’s single-minded focus to date can’t reasonably be criticized. Further, he seems to understand that it’s not enough simply to introduce a bill. Rubio’s been taking it the next step by lobbying for it, and for related China policy changes, actively in the media – both broadcast and print. He still needs to show a willingness to buttonhole his colleagues actively – the most important form of Capitol Hill lobbying. But (paradoxically) his leadership on 2013’s decidedly non-nationalist or populist Gang of Eight immigration bill at least indicates he recognizes the importance of this test. 

I’ve often wondered whether American politics can produce a leader with both the populist leanings of an outsider and the insider-type institutional expertise and contacts needed to turn these impulses into actual change. Rubio’s China bill and the policy migration it represents looks like major grounds for optimism.       

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Beware the Fear-Mongering on the Trump Tariffs

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Bloomberg, border adjustment tax, China, inflation, manufacturing, metals, overcapacity, productivity, real value-added, steel, tariffs, trade law, Trump, U.S. Business and Industry Council, value-added taxes, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Well, there can’t be any doubt about it now. President Trump’s trade policy course changes – and especially his determination hike U.S. tariffs – are already harming American manufacturers and the broader economy. After all, this Bloomberg News post just told us so. Except if you examine it carefully, and add a little common sense info, there’s no reason to believe any of these claims – especially for the manufacturing sector.

According to this Bloomberg report, “Confidence gauges spanning small businesses, factories and the public at large are coming off the boil as U.S. tariffs on imported metals — along with threats and counterthreats over Chinese goods — roil the stock market and cast a cloud over what was otherwise a bright economic outlook.”

Manufacturers reportedly face especially serious threats:

“The Philadelphia Fed’s index of business activity six months from now dropped 7.2 points to 40.7 in April, the lowest level since July. Earlier this week, a similar report from the New York Fed showed its future business conditions index registered the steepest one-month drop since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Meantime, factories in both regions are reporting rising prices.”

And Bloomberg conveniently provided a chart displaying these reported “rising costs amid tariffs on imported metals.”

But the chart, and related macroeconomic data, actually represent compelling evidence that metals prices so far have had no discernible impact on U.S. manufacturing’s fortunes. Consider the following:

As the chart shows, the prices paid by inputs for factories in the Northeast sank significantly between 2014 and 2015. Steel prices fell especially sharply (largely because the Chinese government was fueling a massive global glut in this metal).

And according to official U.S. data, how did American domestic manufacturing fare? It grew in real value-added terms ( a measure of output preferred by many economists) by all of 0.90 percent.

The following year, according to the chart, prices these factories reported paying stayed very low, but began rising. Steel prices rebounded significantly, too. Manufacturing’s real value-added growth that year? About half the 2014-15 rate – 0.47 percent.

Those factory prices rose even faster the following year, and steel prices kept increasing. But the impact on America’s domestic manufacturing wasn’t exactly catastrophic. In fact, its annual real value-added growth nearly quadrupled – to 1.89 percent.

How on earth could this be? How about this as a starting point for an answer? Prices of steel or any other inputs aren’t the only influences on business performance. And they’re probably not the most important. For example, demand (aka “customers”) matter, too. In the United States, when those metals prices were dropping sharply between 2014 and 2015, price-adjusted economic growth turned in a solid 2.90 percent growth. The following year, when metals prices stayed unusually low, the real economic growth rate halved. And guess what also nearly halved? Manufacturing’s real value-added increase.

Even more interesting – between 2016 and 2017, when metals prices kept bouncing back, manufacturing’s real value-added jumped. Maybe in part because the economy’s overall growth rate increased by more than 50 percent, to 2.30 percent?

Looking at global growth (i.e., including foreign customers) yields similar conclusions. During that 2014-15 year of greatly reduced metals prices, pretty good U.S. growth but lousy manufacturing growth, the International Monetary Fund tells us that the global economy expanded by (a pretty poor) 3.10 percent. Chances are that feeble growth didn’t help America’s manufacturers, many of whom make much of their money by exporting.

Global growth only picked up to 3.20 percent the following year, but America’s growth tanked. The latter, then, seems to have mattered more to domestic manufacturers, as their own expansion rate fell by 50 percent. Between 2016 and 2017, however, when both the U.S. expansion and the global expansion sped up (the latter to 3.80 percent), American  manufacturing’s growth experienced that impressive takeoff. 

Now it’s true that the Trump metals tariffs could inflict greater harm on U.S. domestic manufacturers going forward, as they could impose on metals-users new costs that come on top of whatever global prices they need to pay at a given moment.  Nonetheless, it’s not like industry is exactly helpless to respond. For instance, it could start improving its productivity performance – which has been lousy on balance during this economic recovery. More productive sectors and companies of course can pass on input price increases without charging their customers more – and thereby undercutting their competitiveness.

At the same time, the metal-users’ loud complaints about the Trump tariffs point to a longstanding weakness of U.S. trade policy and especially the related body of trade law that the President has needed to rely on so far because the chief executive’s unilateral tariff-imposing authority is so limited. Because the trade law system, like U.S.-style legal systems generally, springs into action only when a specific complaint from private business is filed, its remedies are confined to that industry’s predicament. Not even the few trade cases initiated by the Obama administration or even the Trump administration have changed this pattern. (The sweeping tariffs on China sought in the President’s Section 301 intellectual property-centered action have come closest.) The tendency of such narrow-bore measures to enable foreign trade rivals to respond with divide-and-conquer tactics shows that two improvements should be made.

First, as proposed by my previous organization, the U.S. Business and Industry Council, industry-specific tariffs approved by the trade law system should be accompanied by similar protection for the “downstream” (i.e., user) industries. As a result, they would be much less likely to be victimized in the American market, anyway, by foreign competitors not saddled with higher input prices. 

Second, and even better, the administration should revive the Border Adjustment Tax that was part of the tax reform plan initially introduced by the House of Representatives’ Republican leaders. This measure, which would have worked much like the foreign Value-Added Taxes (VATs) used by most trading economies, would not only have provided the equivalent of protective tariffs for all U.S. goods and services facing import competition.  It would have boosted the competitiveness of all American exports in all foreign markets by providing the equivalent of a subsidy.   

Although President Trump initially (and weirdly) was cool to the Border Adjustment Tax, reportedly more recently he’s been changing his tune. Adopting this plan in particular could solve most of the economic as well as the political problems currently threatening his trade policies. 

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Case for Trump’s New Metals Tariffs

Tags

alliances, allies, aluminum, China, inflation, manufacturing, overcapacity, steel, subsidies, tariffs, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Steel Association, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

President Trump has announced his decision to impose tariffs on U.S. imports of steel and aluminum – cue the trade war hysteria. And the national security hysteria. And the inflation hysteria. Here are some talking points I hope the administration will feel free to steal as it defends the decision in the days leading up to the release of the final tariff plan:

>Many countries have declared their intention to retaliate against the American tariffs with higher barriers to U.S. exports. Curiously, they are overlooking the Chinese government-subsidized overcapacity at the root of the long-time distortions in world steel and aluminum markets.

>Many of these countries want the problem tackled multilaterally. But the World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed to stem this overcapacity (or deal effectively with many other forms of Chinese trade and broader economic predation), and a G20 forum specifically addressing the steel issue has produced nothing since its founding in December, 2016.

>Although major steel-producing powers like the European Union have imposed their own steep tariffs on shipments from China, the global glut has continued. One reason may be that, since the global economic recovery took hold in 2010, according to World Steel Association data. the United States has been the major steel producer that has suffered by far the greatest loss of global production share by volume. (See this post of mine for the 2010 figures and the Steel Association’s latest report for the most recent – January, 2018 – figures.) And as of the most current World Steel Association data (2016), the United States is also the steel producer with the highest steel trade deficit by volume (21.7 million tons). 

>As a result, charges that American steel tariffs in particular will jeopardize the rules-based global trade system seem to be arguing that this system requires the United States to remain as the world’s dumping ground for government-subsidized steel.

>A much more constructive response from America’s trade partners would be finally getting serious about shutting down China’s overcapacity and placing market forces back in the saddle for global steel pricing. The Trump tariffs should be seen as a signal that the United States will no longer accept world steel trade patterns that treat the United States as the fall guy, and should therefore act as a spur to achieve genuinely meaningful multilateral results.

>The above gaming of global steel trade by so many American trade partners also explains the need for the kinds of sweeping measures made possible by the national security-oriented Section 232 of U.S. trade law, rather than the narrower curbs required by, say, the countervailing duty statutes.

>Fears have been expressed in the U.S. foreign policy community, and by the Trump administration’s Defense Department, that certain tariff schemes may needlessly harm America’s relationships with key security allies. Those voicing such concerns should also explain why countries that would permit these U.S. measures to undermine alliance relationships should be seen as reliable partners when overseas crises erupt.

>Tariff opponents contend that America’s use of an allegedly bogus national security rationale for the curbs will open the doors for other members of the WTO to use equally specious justifications for their own tariffs on numerous products. These opponents seem to forget that most of the world’s major economies, which rely heavily on export-led growth resulting from large trade surpluses, so far have encountered little difficulty in protecting their own domestic markets via a wide range of both tariff and non-tariff trade barriers.

>New national security rationales for new tariffs will be especially suspicious if used by the numerous American security allies that have been free-riding on U.S. defense guarantees for decades – and skimping on their own defense spending. These allies include Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Canada.

>Tariff critics also insist that the American economy will suffer major harm from foreign retaliation. They seem – oddly – convinced that U.S. trade partners that rely heavily on net exporting to the United States for their growth have nothing to fear from further the American trade restrictions that may result. Will these countries really launch trade attacks on one of their best customers?

>Tariff opponents focusing on economic impacts argue that the measures will increase the cost of a key American manufacturing input, and reduce the competitiveness of domestic steel-and aluminum-using industries. They seem to fear that these industries cannot become or remain globally competitive if such inputs are priced via free market mechanisms, rather than kept artificially cheap due to foreign government decisions.

>These economically focused tariff opponents also seem to believe that the current U.S. economy is one characterized by companies that enjoy considerable pricing power. Given inflation that has long undershot the Federal Reserve’s target, that’s a difficult argument to understand.

>In addition, those with an economic focus appear unconcerned about the prevalence and spread of government interventions in trade flows not only in steel, but in a wide variety of traded goods. If foreign governments conclude that they can subsidize and dump two key American industries out of existence, why would they stop with steel and aluminum? How can a growing presence of foreign government-subsidized goods (and services) help strengthen free markets in the United States and enable Americans to reap their maximum gains? And how can such growing foreign intervention help the global economy as a whole progress toward reaping the maximum gains of unfettered trade?

Over to you, Mr. President!

(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: Trump Steel Trade Critics Offer Recipes for (Continued) Failure

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Barack Obama, China, European Union, globalization, Japan, national security, Russia, steel, tariffs, The Washington Post, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Steel Organization, World Trade Organization, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The case for bold new Trump administration steps to ensure the U.S. steel industry’s continued viability is so clear that even opponents can’t help but (unwittingly) make it.

Thus this morning, The Washington Post editorial board praised – or at least seems to have praised – the Obama administration’s imposition of the tariffs on imports of Chinese steel because the world’s overwhelming source of overcapacity is China. The Post also urged the White House to remember that in order to avoid “international destabilization,” it’s critical to keep relying on “global institutions such as the World Trade Organization.”

Yet as the paper implicitly recognizes, none of these approaches has succeeded. What else can reasonably be concluded from its acknowledgment that the although the world’s “major governments, including President Barack Obama’s administration, have long recognized” the problem of Chinese fueled steel overcapacity,” the glut continues to create “unsustainable downward pressure on producers’ prices….” That’s “unsustainable” as in “can’t be sustained.” As in “if the downward pressure isn’t stopped, steel producers will start going under.”

The Post, however, has left out some crucial information. Specifically, the pressure on global steel producers has been far from uniformly felt. According to the latest (2015) figures from the World Steel Organization, which represents most of the global industry, the United States runs the world’s largest steel trade deficit by far measured in volume (which leaves out the distortions created by falling prices). At 26.5 million tons, it was nearly 80 percent greater than that of the world’s next biggest net steel importer (Vietnam, at 14.9 million tons), and nearly seven times greater than that of the European Union (3.9 million tons).

China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and others are running surpluses, with China lapping the pack at 98.4 million tons and Japan, universally described as a staunch U.S. ally, coming in second at still-impressive 34.9 million tons.

These skewed trade patterns, moreover, are unmistakably affecting national steel output. For example, according to the World Steel Organization, in 2010, as the world’s recovery from the Great Recession was becoming established, the United States accounted for 7.46 percent of global steel output by volume. In 2016, its share had shrunk to 4.95 percent.

China clearly has been the big winner, with its share of world steel production rising from 42.62 percent to 50.16 percent during this period. Japan has boosted market share as well – albeit only from 6.49 percent to 6.60 percent. The European Union and Russia have lost ground – but the losses have been minimal. The former’s global market share has dipped from 11.54 percent to 10.43 percent. The latter’s is down from 4.48 percent to 4.45 percent.

Even weirder: America’s economic growth during this period has outstripped the recoveries of all these countries except China, and its manufacturing sector has recovered (though not completely) thanks largely to a rebound in the steel-intensive automotive industry.

In other words, according to the Post editorial board, due to global overcapacity, the U.S. steel industry is facing unsustainable (and largely artificial) pricing pressure, the worldwide statistics make clear that this pressure is in a class by itself…and the Trump administration is being advised to stick with responses that have been manifestly incapable of preventing this dangerous situation.

It’s perfectly respectable to oppose as a solution the kind of national security-focused tariffs that the Trump administration is considering – even though the advantages they offer (they need no Congressional approval and they can be implemented relatively quickly as well as flexibly) are substantial. But if critics – domestic and foreign – are genuinely interested in solving the longstanding world steel problem in a timely manner, they’ll start proposing alternatives that haven’t already failed.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Another U.S. Trade Deal that Puts America Last

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apparel, CAFTA, Central America, Central Anerica Free Trade Agreement, dispute resolution, Dominican Republic, DR-CAFTA, free trade agreements, Guatemala, labor rights, legalism, offshoring, Trade, trade law, {What's Left of) Our Economy

To get a good idea of one of the biggest, and most neglected, failings of U.S. trade policy, look no farther than America’s near-neighbors in Central America. For earlier this month, a development on the labor rights front made clear the America Last approach Washington has taken toward the ways that disputes are handled under various trade agreements the United States has signed – in this case, the deal with six Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA).

On June 14, an arbitration panel established by the dispute resolution chapter of the DR-CAFTA treaty ruled against the United States and for Guatemala in a long-running quarrel between the two signatories over labor rights practices in the latter. On the face of it, it’s hard to take seriously the arbiters’ conclusion that Guatemala indeed is not enforcing its own labor laws ostensibly aimed at safeguarding workers’ rights, but that this failure hasn’t affected bilateral trade flows. After all, in a world where its major industrial export industry – apparel – has to compete on price with super-low wage garment giants like China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, keeping wages down is essential to the Guatemalan apparel sector’s very survival.

But the fundamental problem with this situation has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It has to do with the structure of the dispute-resolution process set up by the DR-CAFTA treaty, which is basically the same as that set up by all U.S. bilateral and regional free trade deals. Simply put, it bears absolutely no resemblance to economic or policy realities.

Two especially important and related points to keep in mind: First, when the DR-CAFTA deal was ratified by Congress, in 2005, the combined economies of all six Central American countries proper only equaled the output of New Haven, Connecticut. Adding the Dominican Republican barely moved this needle. Because of this gargantuan size disparity, access to the American economy was clearly the paramount prize in this arrangement, and the non-U.S. signatories needed the deal much more than did the United States.

Second, largely as a result, the DR-CAFTA deal was less an example of trade policy than of economic development policy. Yes, cheerleaders for the agreement talked of opening exciting new markets for American domestic producers – talk belied by the micro nature of Central American and Dominican markets). And yes, they spoke of enhancing the competitiveness of the American textile industry – claims belied by the impossibility that the pact could overcome the advantages of the Asian apparel giants). But at bottom, the deal was a foreign aid program for the region.

Leave aside its clear failure to achieve meaningful “democracy, economic reform, and regional integration” – at least if you believe even a fraction of countless news reports of out-of-control lawlessness and violence in Central America. Given the non-U.S. signatories’ desperate need for any American help they could get, why on earth would Washington permit the treaty to create a system for choosing arbitration panels – which have the last say in determining a dispute’s winner and loser – that treats the United States and the other DR-CAFTA countries as legal equals?

One answer is that the agreement – like many other U.S. trade deals – was actually intended to foster offshoring, not open foreign markets. So the multinational companies that have dominated the American trade policymaking process for so long made sure that dispute resolution aimed first and foremost to prevent the United States from limiting its imports from their Central American and Dominican factories for any reason. And given the absence of significant consumption markets in the region, that observation seems compelling.

But the so-far-standard U.S. approach to dispute-resolution in trade also typifies a legalistic worldview that contrasts sharply with global realities even in an economic sphere where, for numerous reasons, it’s still completely inappropriate. In fact, this legalism is likelier to undermine American interests than serve them.

Principally, the prevalence tariff and non-tariff barriers to both trade and investment, along with various other predatory practices, shows that the consensus on acceptable economic behavior needed for a genuine legal system to function adequately simply does not exist in fact. Ditto for the great majority of economies that rely heavily on amassing net exports to generate growth. As a result, international commerce is anything but the positive-sum arena portrayed by politicians and academics. So any arrangements meant to negate national power are bound to handcuff the United States. Worse, they handcuff America needlessly.

Perhaps one day, the worldwide consensus needed for a genuine, legitimate system of trade law will emerge. Until it does, however, the United States should capitalize on the leverage it enjoys as the world’s most open major trading power and market of last resort, and sign trade agreements that establish it as judge, jury, and court of appeals for whatever disputes arise. There’s no better place to start than scrapping the artificial – and indeed forced – egalitarianism of the DR-CAFTA trade agreement.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: At the WTO, Europe Claims a Right to Free Ride

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Airbus, alliances, Boeing, Charles Dickens, Defense Department, EU, European Union, foreign policy establishment, free-riding, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, subsidies, Trade, trade law, Trump, World Trade Organization, WTO

Charles Dickens famously observed that the law can be an idiot. Last week’s World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on U.S. and European Union (EU) aerospace subsidies reminds that American alliance policy can be idiotic – and in a key respect has been for decades. The fault here lies not with the WTO – which is hardly beyond criticism. Instead, the problem entails an American approach to international security relationships that continues a decades-long record of enabling brazen free-riding even under the current U.S. administration – which so far has decried this practice only rhetorically.

Interestingly, the WTO decision last Friday looks like a big win for American aerospace giant Boeing and a big loss for its EU rival Airbus. The trade body ruled as still illegal only one of the original 28 subsidies provided Boeing by Washington state and the federal government that were challenged by Airbus. According to Airbus, the WTO agreed with its allegation that some of the other 27 means of Boeing support were subsidies, but Boeing says that since the ruling determined that these payments had not harmed Airbus, they can remain in place. Airbus disagrees, so expect more litigation.

But here’s what’s completely outrageous. Some of the subsidies Airbus successfully challenged – at least on paper so far – were U.S. Defense Department subsidies. It’s jaw-dropping enough to recognize that Airbus gets military support, too. What’s worse is that so much of the Pentagon money handed over to Boeing (and other defense contractors) has been spent on weapons and other military systems that the United States would not need at all or in such quantity either if Washington hadn’t taken on any role in protecting Europe for decades, or if the Europeans bore anything like an appropriate burden for the own defense.

And don’t forget: For decades, even most U.S. Presidents and other foreign policy establishmentarians who have assign supreme value to continuing current transatlantic security arrangements agree that too many European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been shirking. Talk about biting the hand that shields you.

It’s important, however, to keep in mind who’s mainly to blame. It’s clear that the Europeans deserve no high marks for either gratitude or loyalty. But it’s also clear that their actions can be reasonably portrayed as legitimate efforts to maximize their own self interests – reflecting the equally reasonable judgment that these gambits long have been good bets to succeed.

What the American public needs to ask is (a) why their leaders have handled alliance relationships so ineptly as to have created expectations of free-riding that the WTO case shows are now seen as nothing less than a right to free-ride; and (b) whether the avowedly transactional Trump administration will view the EU defense subsidy charges as a long overdue opportunity to say enough’s enough.