(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Too Little China Realism Too Late from the U.S. Chamber

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China, Daniel Rosen, decoupling, economics, investment, national security, Rhodium Group, Trade, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has just released a report warning of the high costs of any efforts to decouple the American economy from China’s completely. That’s not especially big news: The Chamber has long campaigned for closer trade and investment ties with the People’s Republic, which until very recently have been clearcut boons to the bottom lines of the multinational companies that run this premier American business organization.

What is big news is that the Chamber hasn’t come out against decoupling as such. Far from it, and that’s noteworthy. But the report, and the China record of groups like Chamber, also reenforce the importance of asking and answering a big question about U.S. strategy toward this increasingly wealthy, powerful, and hostile Asian giant that American political leaders and news organizations keep energetically ducking.

First, though, the report’s overall conclusion deserves highlighting. According to principal author Daniel Rosen, an analyst with a consulting firm called the Rhodium Group, “U.S.-China engagement was always contingent on shared liberal economic goals. As Beijing diverges back toward greater state planning, a less permissive stance is necessary. But our self-interest lies in purposeful decoupling, not a gratuitous pulling apart. This study is a step toward re-sizing our engagement rationally.”

These points matter because despite the Chamber’s claim that it’s “long advocated for a balanced and rational approach to commercial relations with China,” especially when key decisions were being made, it’s consistently described the choices faced by Americans in the crudest either-or terms possible. As one of its members told a Congressional hearing in 2000, as the nation was debating the landmark question of whether to accept China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), “We have a simple choice to make. We can either embrace and profit from China as a trading partner, or stick our heads in the sand and hope they go away.”

Yet however welcome the Chamber’s new acknowledgement that greater Sino-American economic integration and trade, investment, and technology flows aren’t always net winners for the United States, it’s troubling that the study chose to focus on the economic downsides of “complete disengagement” and “full decoupling” from China. For any change of the kind is many years away at best, and no major voices have recommended that it be accomplished immediately.

Further, the report’s overarching assessment that “the costs of anything approaching ‘full’ decoupling are uncomfortably high” is torpedoed by an analytical framework that the Chamber itself admits is woefully deficient practically across-the-board.

For example, readers early on will learn that “because of the many variables at play, it is beyond the capacity of economics to deliver a precise answer regarding the costs of decoupling” and that the report’s “estimations are derived from economic models of ‘normal’ before the COVID-19 pandemic; the macroeconomic assumptions about future supply and demand that such models depend on must now be viewed with great skepticism.” The honesty is refreshing, but also casts doubt on the point of the entire exercise, as it’s a high-falutin’ way of saying “Garbage in, garbage out.”

A closely related flaw: Nowhere does the study look at the counterfactual – that is, the impact on the U.S. economy of maintaining the degree of decoupling that’s been achieved already, or of expanding it on the margins. This failure is especially serious since the Chamber itself agrees that decoupling has long been high Chinese priority – at least since 2006, when Beijing (formally) announced an “indigenous innovation” policy that (in the Chamber’s words) sought to “reduce reliance on foreign technology.”

The Chamber also admits that its analyses “explore only the economic welfare effects: they do not attempt to price in the costs or benefits to U.S. security, which is a critical factor in the rethink of engagement with China.” But enhancing national security in all of its dimensions – including the supply chain vulnerabilities highlighted by the pandemic in medical goods of all kinds, and by Intel’s loss of the global lead in semiconductor manufacturing knowhow in the information technology sector – is, as the authors write, “a critical factor in the rethink of engagement with China.”

No one with a brain in their head would insist that no economic costs will be incurred from significant decoupling. (And yes, in this vein, former President Trump was wrong to boast that when it comes to countries running big surpluses with the United States, “trade wars are” both “good and easy to win.”) It’s the nature of the tradeoffs that now most urgently needs careful examination.

These problems in turn lead to the big question mentioned above. Every American whether acting on their own or in groups has every right to participate in the China policy debate. But the supporters and opponents of ever greater engagement have been vying for decades now, and having been a leader of the former, the Chamber ranks prominently among the losers on the substance. Why, therefore, since the organization and its allies have been so behind the curve for so long, should their input deserve much credibility today?

Sure, as made clear by the Chamber report and the China policy shift seen throughout the mainstreams of the American business, political, and policy communities (at least rhetorically), some learning has taken place. But where’s the evidence that the engagers’ views and instincts are any on target and more valuable in this new environment than they were in years past, when they steered American policy so incompetently, and in fact largely created the current danger? The positions they back today might have worked had they been put into effect before China became such an economic, technological, and military force. But now that the damage has been done, why believe that they’ll suffice now?

At the least, the engagers should face the burden of explaining why their abysmal record over so many years still entitles them to a serious hearing. And it’s even more reasonable to assume that if the likes of the Chamber are backing limited decoupling nowadays, the best course for America is pursuing this goal even  more aggressively and comprehensively.

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Tech’s Cheap Labor Quest Just Got More Brazen & Fact-Free

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(What' Left of) Our Economy, Bloomberg.com, CCP Virus, Cheap Labor Lobby, CompTIA, coronavirus, COVID 19, H1B, immigrants, Indeed Hiring Lab, information technology, job openings, Jobs, labor shortages, recession, tech, tech jobs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, unemployment rate, visas, Wuhan virus

Just went you think that many major U.S. business groups and their members couldn’t get any greedier or out of touch or both, check out this news on the immigration front: Some of the biggest of these organizations, containing most of the country’s most gigantic companies, have just sued the Trump administration seeking to freeze or block visas for immigrant workers in various job categories.

In other words, they’re trying to swell the American workforce with foreign workers at a time when literally tens of millions of Americans who want them can’t find jobs. And adding insult to injury, in the midst of this jobs-pocalypse, these companies are justifying their demands by claiming they face labor shortages. The obvious objective: pump up the national supply of workers, and thereby drive down the price – i.e., wage – these workers can command.

Worse, their contentions that they can’t find the employees they need continue to include the tech sector, even though the U.S. economy’s CCP Virus-induced downturn has been so bad that it’s spurring major job-shedding even in those industries and occupations. (The final word in the previous sentence is meant to remind that many non-tech businesses employ workers with tech specializations.)

According to the one of the major plaintiffs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,

“Our lawsuit seeks to overturn these sweeping and unlawful immigration restrictions that are an unequivocal ‘not welcome’ sign to the engineers, executives, IT [information technology] experts, doctors, nurses and other critical workers who help drive the American economy.”

Indeed, the plaintiffs insist that these kinds of workers are currently so scarce in the United States that if the restrictions remain in place, they’ll need to secure them by investing more in their foreign operations.

These shortage claims, whether involving labor or skills, are anything but new, and have been bogus even in good economic times – as proved in devastating detail by this recent Bloomberg.com analysis of the tech sector’s longstanding drive to import more workers under the H1B visa program. Thus you should be Laughing Out Loud at the notion that the human assets companies need simply don’t exist in the 50 states during American economy’s worst stretch since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But the shortage-mongers (who I like to call collectively the Cheap Labor Lobby, since) aren’t only fighting common sense, or even simply a U.S. President’s broad authority to control foreign entry into the country. They’re fighting the data.

For example, CompTIA, which describes itself as “the world’s leading tech association,” reports that information technology “occupations in all sectors of the [U.S.] economy declined by an estimated 134,000 jobs” between June and July. And although the organization judges that such employment is up by more than 203,000 since the CCP Virus broke out in America, the 4.4 percent tech unemployment rate it cites – however much lower than the economy -wide jobless rate – is still much higher than the 1.3 percent it estimated in July, 2019.

In addition, the widely followed consulting firm Indeed Hiring Lab has found that between mid-May and late July, “tech job postings have trended below overall job postings” in the United States, and as the graph below shows, the gap is getting much wider. Also clear: Since mid-May, these tech job postings have been stagnant at this very low level.    

The information technology sector of course has long been one of the U.S. economy’s biggest bright spots, so far be it for this tech dinosaur to offer it advice. But I still can’t help but wonder how much better it could do if it didn’t spend so much time spreading misinformation about the country’s labor markets.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Chamber’s “Trade Works” Campaign is Clearly Hoping that Trade Fakery Works

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exports, imports, recovery, states, tariffs, Trade, Trade Deficits, trade surpluses, Trump, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is at it again: It’s launched a public relations campaign to strengthen American support for conventional trade liberalization policies (or at least to weaken support for President Trump’s increasing resort to tariffs to overhaul these policies). Its campaign focuses on how the old trade status quo was benefiting the U.S. economy. It’s using “state-by-state analysis to argue that Trump is risking a global trade war.” And as usual, it’s pretending that national and state trade flows (and their employment effects) consist of and stem only from exports.

Also as usual – there’s an excellent reason for the Chamber to resort once again to such intellectual dishonesty. Since the nation as a whole is running a huge and rising trade deficit that has cut into the subpar economic growth generated by the current expansion, it’s practically inevitable that the great majority of the fifty states have seen worsening trade balances significantly slow their recoveries as well.

And thanks to the Commerce Department, which tracks individual states’ merchandise exports and imports, it’s easy to see just how greatly the trade losers outnumber the trade winners. (State-level data on much smaller flows of services exports and imports are not available.) 

Specifically, from the year the current recovery began (2009) through last year, 26 states have seen their merchandise trade deficits increase, two have seen such trade surpluses fall, and in five, goods surpluses have turned into deficits. So in all, trade has dragged on growth during the recovery for 33 of the 50 states.

Of the 17 states that have improved their trade performances during this period, five have seen their deficits shrink, six have generated higher surpluses, and six have turned deficits into surpluses.

These data thoroughly debunk the claim made by the Chamber’s campaign that “Trade Works. Tariffs Don’t.” So it’s clear that what this pillar of the Offshoring Lobby is actually counting on is that trade fakery works.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is the Offshoring Lobby Shaping U.S. China Policy Once More?

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Bob Davis, China, Logan Act, offshoring lobby, Robert Mueller, Special Counsel, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Quite the nugget that came near the end of The Wall Street Journal‘s April 29 report on the run-up to the upcoming U.S. trade talks with China scheduled to begin in Beijing this week:

“During the past few weeks, China’s ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive director, Myron Brilliant, operating as a backchannel between the two governments, called on their extensive contacts in Washington to try to get talks going again.”

It’s bizarre on so many levels. Most notably, but far from certainly, is the possibility that President Trump (whose campaign for the White House emphasized remaking America’s China trade and broader economic policies specifically to promote U.S. growth and employment) is being significantly influenced by the Chamber of Commerce (which has long championed a China policy that helps America-based businesses supply the lucrative U.S. market from super low-cost and largely unregulated China)?

That would be some kick in the pants to Trump supporters expecting the President to keep his China trade campaign promises.

Alternatively, the President might simply have been using the Chamber as a means of communication. But this decision would be puzzling, too, since the United States maintains a big embassy in Beijing, complete with a full-fledged ambassador, as well as numerous other official ways to talk with the Chinese. What could the Chamber add?

It’s even more interesting, and potentially important, to consider the chances that the Chamber took the initiative. If so, could the Logan Act have been violated? You may remember that this is a U.S. law requiring criminal penalties for

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States….”

You might also remember that in the wake of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s admission of lying to the FBI in connection with the the Bureau’s Trump Russia collusion investigation, calls proliferated to prosecute him – and other Trump-ers – for violations of this (little used) eighteenth century statute. No one outside his office knows whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into this possibility in its own probe, but this former Chairman of the organization Common Cause believes he should. If the Chamber was acting as a free agent, might it be in legal jeopardy, too?

I asked Bob Davis, a co-author of the Journal piece, about how this backchannel began, and he responded that he couldn’t go beyond his description of the actions he was told about. Which is of course fair enough for any reporter.

What should be clear, however, is that, if the Journal report is accurate, neither of the above explanations should comfort anyone, whatever their views on U.S.-China trade issues. The former could signal the imminent shattering of a campaign promise – which could only fuel further corrosive public cynicism about American politics. The latter could indicate that special interests unaccountable to the American people keep wielding ever greater influence over the nation’s policies – including those extending “beyond the water’s edge.”

So let’s all hope that Davis and his Journal colleague will keep digging, and/or that other reporters start.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Real Messages of that Business Letter Opposing Tariffs on China

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American Chamber of Commerce in China, Business Roundtable, China, currency manipulation, National Association of Manufacturers, offshoring, protectionism, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, US-China Business Council, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Forty-five American business groups have just sent a letter to top Trump administration officials urging them not to impose “sweeping tariffs” on China in response to its longstanding and widespread theft of U.S. “trade secrets and other intellectual property.” That’s not especially newsy, since large elements of the American business community have long opposed any measures that would rock what they consider to be a highly profitable boat – the business they do with the People’s Republic.

Here’s what’s much more newsworthy: The list of signers is missing some of the leading lights of the U.S. trade association world, including the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and two leading China-specific groups – the US-China Business Council, and the American Chamber of Commerce in China (which is distinct from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an organization that did sign).

Since the membership of the U.S. Chamber in particular is so all-inclusive, it’s possible that its name on the letter was thought to suffice for many companies belonging to those other groups that are absent. But these companies have never been shy about practicing double- and even triple-counting. So it’s also possible that the above absences indicate that the American business community – and especially the multinational companies that have so powerfully influenced U.S. Trade policy with China for decades – is seriously divided on the tariff issue.

What’s also noteworthy is the letter’s statement that “Tariffs would not only affect Chinese shippers but also harm U.S. companies that sell component pieces of final products exported from China.” In other words, the letter is implicitly acknowledging that many of its signers have been among those companies that have long spearheaded the offshoring of American jobs and entire supply chains to China.

Their offshoring focus of course explains much of their staunch opposition to vigorous Washington responses to such cut-and-dry protectionist Chinese practices as currency manipulation: Although this trade predation has damaged America’s domestic production base, these businesses’ China-based operations have been major beneficiaries.

Similarly, the strong interest of so many of these companies in continuing to coddle China’s mercantilism at the domestic economy’s expense explains the seeming paradox of their main policy message to President Trump: On the one hand, they “continue to have serious concerns regarding China’s trade policies and practices” and admit that their persistence endangers “U.S. global competitiveness, innovation, productivity, and cybersecurity.”

And on the other, they insist that American countermeasures be limited to steps – like “measured, commercially meaningful actions consistent with international obligations” and working “with like-minded partners to address common concerns with China’s trade and investment policies” – that have been tried for years, and that so far have produced nothing but failure.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Can the U.S. Chamber Put One & One Together on Trade?

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Cheap Labor Lobby, Donald Trump, free trade agreements, General Electric, Information Technology Agreement, ITA, Jobs, multinational corporations, national security, non-tariff barriers, offshoring, Ooffshoring Lobby, protectionism, tariffs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

I’ve long urged trade policy critics (including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump) to stop questioning the intelligence of globalization cheerleaders. Especially, when we’re talking about offshoring-happy multinational corporations and their hired guns in Washington, I’ve insisted, they’ve known exactly what they’ve been doing – pushing the trade and other international economic policies likeliest to reward the companies with the biggest profits in the shortest time-frame.

True, the longer-term effects have produced losses for many of them – especially since the immense imbalances resulting from these policies helped trigger the financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession, which at least initially hit earnings and stock prices. But charges of stupidity don’t seem valid even in this regard, since most of the American economic system’s incentives discourage long-term thinking.

A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report, however, could justify a rethink. For it’s a great example of an organization ignoring evidence that’s been staring it in the face for literally decades – and that’s become especially glaring recently. Moreover, it inadvertently validates the claim made by American politicians like Trump that major numbers of manufacturing jobs could be returned to the United States if Washington only mustered the will to do so.

The Chamber, of course, has been one of the most powerful mainstays of the overlapping corporate offshoring and cheap labor lobbies, and this morning released a study bemoaning the worldwide growth of what’s often called “techno-protectionism.” That is, more and more countries have been working harder and harder to promote their own domestic information technology industries through a variety of new regulations that the Chamber rightly notes have cloaked simple beggar-thy-neighbor aims in national security rationales.

In the Chamber’s words, “some national governments, by intentionally or unintentionally defining security concerns in an overly broad manner, are applying intense pressure on the [tech] sector to localize rather than globalize.” And the group has echoed numerous charges that China is a prime culprit.

The Chamber’s long list of these practices underscores points that I and many others have been making since even before trade and offshoring became hot-button issues. The first is that such non-tariff barriers, which are excruciatingly difficult for trade agreements to deal with meaningfully, have become much more important obstacles to international commerce than more easily identifiable and therefore vulnerable tariffs and quotas. The second is that, since foreign governments with secretive bureaucracies can erect and maintain these barriers much more effectively than the more transparent United States, trade agreements with these governments usually shaft America.

Yet groups like the Chamber have typically ignored or dismissed these concerns – largely because they produce so much overseas, and care so little about whether their products are Made in America or not. Indeed, their foreign factories and other facilities actually often benefit from the host countries’ subsidies and various forms of protection.

That’s why the Chamber so enthusiastically greeted the announcement late last year that Washington had negotiated a new global agreement to free up further trade in technology products. This broadening of a 1997 pact – the Information Technology Agreement, or ITA – was hailed by the Chamber as “welcome news for American companies and the workers they employ” because it would “end tariffs on approximately $1 trillion worth of high-tech products….” Consistent with my above analysis, none of the dozens of non-tariff barriers that distorted this tech trade was even mentioned.

Less than a year later, we see the Chamber complaining that these largely hidden trade barriers have not only remained so influential, but are spreading so rapidly that they “are now threatening to slow or even reverse” the “globalization of the [tech] sector.” Translation: Despite supposed landmark achievements like the ITA (and the long string of similar deals that preceded it starting with the North American Free Trade Agreement) protectionism worldwide has both remained in place and become so widespread that it’s now handcuffing self-styled global businesses that had hitherto boasted of their power to ignore borders.

In this respect, the Chamber is echoing a recent lament of General Electric’s CEO, who complained that localization pressures have become so pervasive and intense that his giant firm has no choice but to bow before them.

As I pointed out in covering this corporate confession, the global economy features one immense exception to this spreading protectionism – the United States. And ironically, it’s America that has the world’s greatest store of the kind of leverage needed to pursue this strategy successfully. Trump-ian politicians have been saying nothing more remarkable than that this leverage should be used. Reports like the Chamber’s today can only make it that much more difficult for Trump-ian opponents to dismiss this idea as delusional.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Evidence from Supporters that Obama’s Anti-China TPP Case is Phony

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China, fast track, FTAAP, Obama, rules-based trade, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s a good thing for President Obama and supporters of his trade agenda that reporters seem to ignore U.S. Chamber of Commerce material when it debunks one of his main stated rationales for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal and fast track negotiating authority.

The President and his trade allies repeatedly have argued that the TPP is needed to ensure that China doesn’t have the field to itself in “shaping the rules of the road” for doing business in the Asia-Pacific region. But recently, the Chamber reported that Mr. Obama is now OK with a China-led effort to engage in that very same rule-writing – its proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). According to the lobby group, “The U.S. government now publicly supports FTAAP, after opposing it earlier.”

I haven’t found official U.S. statements of support for the FTAA. But at last November’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Washington did agree to a Chinese proposal for this group to launch an FTAAP feasibility study (while succeeding in blocking any endorsement of a time-line for the deal). The Chamber’s claim indicates that Mr. Obama’s views of the FTAAP have softened further, and given how multinational corporations dominate the U.S. trade policy advisory system, it’s hard to believe that its assessment is far off base.

In principle, the Obama administration could have warmed to China’s plan in hopes of influencing rule-writing there as well. That’s the Chamber’s take. But if so, then why in Washington’s eyes are both FTAAP and TPP needed? Alternatively, why does the president now seem to believe that America’s rule-writing interests can be served in a trade negotiation that includes China, whereas for months he has insisted (and keeps claiming) that these interests require the rules to be written before China joins? Similarly, how could a finished TPP (without China, at least at first) ensure U.S.-friendly commercial rules for the Pacific Rim when America and most of the other countries involved are working with China to write another set of rules (albeit one that presumably wouldn’t get finished until much later)?

It’s important to note that, even without this FTAAP complication, the American notion of excluding China from an East Asia/Pacific trade zone is a fool’s quest. The region’s manufacturing in particular is too tightly integrated, and China plays too central a role in the system. Moreover, the idea that any of Asia’s main trading powers take seriously the idea of rules even for governing their own countries ignores millennia of history. But unless the Chamber’s report is flat wrong, this FTAAP news is compelling new evidence for a more important proposition – that the next accurate statement the president makes about fast track and TPP will be the first.