(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trade War(s) Update

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Argentina, Bloomberg.com, Brazil, business investment, China, CNBC, consumption, currency manipulation, debt, Democrats, digital services tax, election 2020, EU, European Union, export controls, Financial Crisis, France, Huawei, internet, investors, manufacturing, production, steel, steel tariffs, tariffs, Trade, Trade Deficits, trade enforcement, trade war, Trump, Wall Street, Wilbur Ross, Xi JInPing, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The most important takeaway from this post about the current status of U.S. trade policy, especially toward China, is that it may have already been overtaken by events since I began putting these thoughts together yesterday.

What follows is a lightly edited version of talking points I put together for staffers at CNBC in preparation for their interview with me yesterday. I thought this exercise would be useful because these appearances are always so brief (even though this one, unusually, featured me solo), and because sometimes they take unexpected detours from the main subject. .

Before presenting them, however, let’s keep in mind this new Bloomberg piece, which came on the heels of remarks yesterday by President Trump signaling that a trade deal with China may need to await next year’s U.S. Presidential election, and plunged the world’s investors into deep gloom. This morning, however, the news agency reported that considerable progress has been made despite “harsh” rhetoric lately from both countries. It seems pretty thinly sourced to me, and the supposed course of the trade talks seems to change almost daily, but stock indices are up considerably all the same.

Moreover, even leaving that proviso aside, what I wrote to the CNBC folks yesterday seems likely to hold up pretty well. And here it is:

1. The President’s latest comments on the China trade deal – which he says might take till after the presidential election to complete – seriously undermines the claim that he considers a deal crucial to his reelection chances because it’s likely to appease Wall Street and thereby prop up the economy. Of course, given Mr. Trump’s mercurial nature, and negotiating style, this latest statement could also simply amount to him playing “bad cop” for the moment.

2. His relative pessimism about a quick “Phase One” deal also seems to reinforce a suggestion implicitly made yesterday by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross when he listed verification and enforcement concerns as among the obstacles to signing the so-called Phase One deal. I have always argued that such concerns are likely to prevent the conclusion of any kind of trade deal acceptable to US interests. That’s both because of China’s poor record of keeping its commitments, and because the Chinese government is too secretive and too big to monitor effectively even the most promising Chinese pledges to change policies on intellectual property theft, illegal subsidies, discriminatory government procurement, and other so-called structural issues.

3. Recent reports of the United States considering tightening (or expanding) restrictions on tech exports to Chinese entities like Huawei also support my longstanding point that the US and Chinese economies will continue to decouple whatever the fate of the current or other trade talks.

4. In my opinion, the President is absolutely right to play hard-to-get on China trade, because Chinese dictator Xi Jinping is under so much pressure due to his own weakening economy, and because of the still-explosive Hong Kong situation.

5. I’ll be especially interested to learn of the Democratic presidential candidates’ reactions to Mr. Trump’s latest China statement, as well as the announcement of the reimposed steel tariffs on Argentina and Brazil, and the threatened tariffs on French “digital services” [internet] taxes. With the exception of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the candidates’ China policies seem to boil down to “Yes, we need to get tough with China, but tariffs are the worst possible response.” None of them has adequately described an alternative approach. The reactions of Democratic Congress leaders Nancy Pelosi in the House and Charles Schumer will be worth noting, too. The latter has been strongly supportive of the Trump approach in general.

6. The new steel tariffs, as widely noted, are especially interesting because they were justified for currency devaluation reasons, with no mention made of the alleged national security threats originally cited as the rationale. Nonetheless, I don’t believe that they represent a significant change in the Trump approach to metals trade, because the administration has always emphasized the need for the duties to be global in scope – to prevent China from transshipping its overcapacity to the US through third countries, and to prevent third countries to relieve the pressures felt by their steel sectors from Chinese product by ramping up their own exports to the US. Obviously, all else equal, countries with weakening currencies (for whatever reason) will realize big advantages in steel trade, as the prices of their output will fall way below those of competitors’ steel industries.

7. Regarding the tariffs threatened in retaliation for France’s digital services tax, they’re consistent with Trump’s longstanding contention that the US-European Union (EU) trade relationship has been lopsidedly in favor of the Europeans for too long, and that tariff pressure is needed to restore some sustainable balance. In this vein, I don’t take seriously the French claim that the tax isn’t targeting U.S. companies specifically. After all, those firms are the dominant players in the field. Second, senior EU officials have started talking openly about strengthening Europe’s “technological sovereignty” – making sure that the continent eliminates its dependence on non-European entities in the sector (including China’s as well as America’s). The digital tax would certainly further the aim of building up European champions – and if need be, at the expense of US-owned companies.

By the way, this position of mine in no way reflects a view that more taxation and more regulation of these companies isn’t warranted. But it’s my belief that these issues should be handled by the American political system.

Also of note: Trump’s suggestion this morning that the French tax isn’t a big deal, and that negotiations look like a promising way to resolve the disagreement.

Finally, here are two more points I wound up making. First, I expressed agreement that the President’s tariff-centric trade policies have created significant uncertainties in the economy’s trade-heavy manufacturing sector in particular – stalling some of the planned business investment that’s essential for healthy growth. But I also noted that much of this uncertainty surely stems from the on-again-off-again nature of the tariffs’ actual and threatened imposition.

As a result, I argued, uncertainty could be significantly reduced if Mr. Trump made much clearer that, whatever the trade talks’ fate, the days of Washington trying to maximize unfettered bilateral trade and investment are over, and a new era marked by much more caution and many more restrictions (including tighter export controls and investment restrictions, as well as tariffs), is at hand.

Second, at the very end, I contended that President Trump deserves great credit for focusing public attention on the country’s massive trade deficits in general. For notwithstanding the standard economists’ view that they don’t matter, reducing them is essential if Americans want their economy’s growth to become healthy, and more sustainable. For as the last financial crisis should have taught the nation, when consumption exceeds production by too great a margin, debts and consequent economic bubbles get inflated – and tend to burst disastrously.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Where’s the (Trump Tariff-Created) Consumer Price Inflation?

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Best Buy, Breitbart.com, canned goods, consumers, inflation, John Carney, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S. International Trade Commission, washing machines, Wilbur Ross, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Have you been shopping for any Labor Day bargains this weekend? If not, you might check out the deals on washing machines. Or just wait a little longer and you could save even more money.

Why on earth am I giving out this kind of consumer advice? Because in recent months, data pointing to soaring prices for these appliances were repeatedly touted as proof that the kinds of tariffs slapped on these goods early in the year – and representative of the trade policy approach generally favored by President Trump – would backfire on American consumers and seriously weaken the consumption-driven U.S. economy.

The tariffs on large residential washing machines went into effect in January, when President Trump approved a recommendation from the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC)– an independent federal agency – to use such measures to counter a surge of these appliances that threatened the viability of domestic producers. (In this way, they did not result from trade diplomacy being conducted by the administration aimed at reworking existing trade deals like the North American Free Agreement or allegedly lopsided relationships like U.S.-China trade.)

But although prices for these appliances have shot up, advertising for dishwashers that’s appeared this weekend indicates that more powerful countervailing economic trends – trends that, incidentally, have hardly been secrets – will quickly begin bringing them back to earth. Specifically, as I’ve noted, despite moving into its tenth year, the current American economic recovery has been too weak, wages and incomes have been too stagnant, and consumers have been too cautious to permit such prices to stick for any serious length of time.

As a result, I wasn’t at all surprised to see Best Buy, a pretty typical appliance retailer, offer the following specials:

>A Whirlpool model marked down from $474.99 to $349.99. (More than 25 percent off.) Whirlpool, incidentally, was the plaintiff in the USITC trade law case that resulted in the tariffs;

>A KitchenAid machine being discounted by nearly 18 percent from its $1,034.99 list price – on top of free installation;

>Two Samsung washers being offered for more than 18 percent less than their $674.99 list price.

>An LG model on sale for $749.99 – nearly 17 percent below its $899.99 list prices.

And P.S. All these offers entail a price match guarantee, as well as “open box” versions of these products that can be had for much, much less.

And don’t think for a minute that washing machines are the only tariff-ed product for which price predictions are looking awfully Chicken Little-ish. Right after President Trump made his initial announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was widely ridiculed for going onto CNBC and using cans of soup as props to argue that the levies would only marginally impact the prices of these goods. Moreover, canned goods producers strongly disagreed.

Yet as reported last week by Breitbart.com‘s John Carney, the latest official inflation figures show that, as of July, the prices of a variety of canned goods – from soup to fruit – have actually fallen year-on-year. Canned beer and vegetables did get more expensive, but by a mere 1.40 percent – much less so than the overall 2.40 percent rate of inflation. And the prices of other metals-using products, like cars and trucks and auto parts, were up just fractionally at best.

I’ve noted previously that there are any number of valid arguments that can be raised against the Trump trade policies. And no one has a perfectly clear crystal ball. But with the predicted effects on employment, output, investment, and now consumer prices so far not coming close to panning out, it’s now clear that the tariff opponents are rapidly running out of arguments.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: It’s “Big Week” on Trade

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100-day China plan, Canada, China, environmental standards, G20, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, James Mathis, labor standards, Mar-a-Lago summit, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, North Korea, Robert Lighthizer, rules of origin, steel, Steve Mnuchin, tairffs, Trade, Trump, Wilbur Ross, Xi JInPing, {What's Left of) Our Economy

During World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a massive multi-day strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany called “Big Week.” The stakes are considerably less apocalyptic, but yesterday began a period for U.S. trade policy that qualifies as a big week, too. Here’s why, and what to look for.

First, yesterday marked the deadline for the 100-day plan announced at the summit between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to start bringing down America’s immense trade deficit with the People’s Republic. Some near-term deals were announced in May, and the Chinese seem to be playing along, to at least some extent. But even the American offshoring lobby, which has greatly soured on China since its full-court-press lobbying campaign convinced Washington to expand U.S.-China trade exponentially, has been complaining that agreements of this scope are way too small to solve their own problems with Beijing in the Chinese market. These deals have even less potential to stop most of the damage still being inflicted on the American domestic economy from wide-ranging predatory Chinese economic practices.

The results are due to be announced this week – and may be delayed to take into account whatever can be accomplished by a new high-level economics dialogue that will hold its first session in Washington this week. Will they produce some big wins for the administration and the domestic economy? As I see it, reasons for pessimism outweigh reasons for optimism.

The former include the president’s continuing statements about the threat posed by China’s imports (in this case, of steel), and the awareness demonstrated by his campaign of how varied and unconventional (meaning they went far beyond tariffs and quotas) China’s trade and trade-related transgressions have been. Among the reasons for pessimism, though, are intra-administration divisions that entail both economic issues (with the administration’s economic populists arrayed against what’s been called the pro-free trade “Goldman Sachs” gang comprised of top economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin) and security issues (pitting the populists against traditional foreign policy thinkers like national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis, who would sympathize with notions like the claim that China should be courted to enlist its help in sitting on North Korea). In addition, the kinds of staffing woes still dogging the administration typically make sharp departures from a policy status quo difficult to engineer.

In fairness, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has forthrightly described the China economic challenge, acknowledged when announcing the 100-day trade plan’s first results that three months worth of talks couldn’t possibly be a game-changer precisely because China’s mercantilism was so pervasive. But in so doing, he unintentionally made the argument – which I support for U.S. trade policy generally – for dispensing with talks altogether and capitalizing on China’s urgent need to export to the United States by addressing this issue unilaterally.

Certainly, this kind of course change would be much more consistent with the president’s numerous campaign statements emphasizing the destructive effect of Chinese predation on America’s economy and working class. It’s also the kind of strategy you’d expect from a chief executive whose non-trade agenda is almost completely stalled in Congress, who’s under intense political pressure, and who could badly use a big economic win in order to prevent major Congressional losses in the next off-year elections – whose campaign cycle will be here before he knows it.

Another big (self-imposed) administration deadline falls today. It marks the date by which the White House said it would submit its detailed plan to renegotiate NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Agreement. In May, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer sent Congressional leaders a brief letter alluding generally to some objectives, but by tomorrow he needs to fill in critical details. Many might have been contained in a draft letter released March 30, and that plan looked pretty impressive. The big question of course is which ones will wind up surviving – and whether the administration is open to other ideas.

As I’ve written, the most important issue concerns the treatment of “rules of origin” – the provisions of NAFTA aimed at ensuring that any goods sold in the three signatory countries (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) are overwhelmingly made in some combination of those countries. The deal that’s currently in place specifies North American content levels that need to be met to qualify for duty-free treatment inside the free trade zone. But the tariff penalties for goods not meeting these standards aren’t nearly high enough to achieve the goal of increasing the entire region’s competitiveness.

The March 30 letter suggested that the administration would seek origin rules that promote U.S. production and jobs more effectively, but it didn’t say how. If much higher external tariffs aren’t proposed in the plan due today, it’s doubtful that any reforms will result in non-NAFTA countries to make more of their products in any of the countries inside the NAFTA zone. Moreover, it’s of course going to be easier for Washington to persuade Canada and Mexico to go along if it re-emphasizes what President Trump has been saying since his meeting last summer, before the election, with his Mexican counterpart: NAFTA should aim to boost the competitiveness of all three countries.

The brief May 18 Lighthizer letter also suggested obliquely the need to change NAFTA’s dispute-resolution procedures, and the March 30 draft discussed the issue at greater length. But even its recommendations to strengthen America’s authority both to respond to import surges from its NAFTA partners (called “safeguards”) and to apply its own Buy American government procurement rules to intra-NAFTA trade may not go far enough.

As I’ve explained, the fundamental problem is that the current dispute-resolution process treats the three NAFTA countries as legal equals, even though the U.S. market is nearly 90 percent of the total NAFTA market, and clearly remains the most valuable prize for all three signatories. Without closing or somehow changing acceptably, the yawning gap between the NAFTA legal regime and the economic facts on the ground, it’s hard to imagine the system serving U.S. interest on net.

At this point, you might be wondering why I haven’t mentioned NAFTA’s labor and environmental provisions. The reason? Although they’ve been major objectives of Democratic party and other left-of-center NAFTA and broader trade policy critics, as with their counterparts in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, they’re largely unenforceable. As I’ve asked before, how many American bureaucrats will be needed to run around how many factories in a signatory country (in this case, Mexico) to ensure that companies aren’t abusing workers or dumping sewage into nearby streams? With more effective rules of origin, however, producers in Mexico will feel less pressure to remain competitive versus rivals in China and elsewhere in Asia by offering the worst possible working conditions and ignoring environmental considerations completely.

Finally, there’s the steel tariff issue. The administration has delayed announcing its decision to impose national security-related tariffs on U.S. steel imports, but is expected to reveal its intentions this week. For what it’s worth, the president sounds determined to approve some levies on some countries’ steel. The main question is who the main targets will be. It will also be crucial to see whether and how prominently the announcement emphasizes the need to deal decisively with the underlying problem – the ocean of subsidized steel from China that has flooded and distorted world markets in recent years.

At the same time, there’s a reason for Mr. Trump to punt – or to punt for the most part: At their summit earlier this month in Hamburg, Germany, the leaders of the world’s twenty largest economies (the “G20”) agreed to require an international commission on the subject to deliver a report by November containing “concrete policy solutions that reduce excess steel capacity.” Postponing unilateral action until this mandate is fulfilled could prove a tempting option for a president who doesn’t exactly need to come under fire from new fronts.

Moreover, if the commission’s ideas don’t pass U.S. muster, Mr. Trump would be in a much stronger position to slap the tariffs on everyone, and vow to maintain or even increase them until meaningful, concrete agreements are reached.

President Trump has been sending surprisingly (at least to me) mixed signals on trade since his Inauguration Day two-step – killing the TPP but refraining from labeling China a currency manipulator. Big Week in trade isn’t likely to clarify the picture fully, but we’re bound to know more at its end than we do here at the beginning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Which Democrats are Serious and Un-Serious About Trade Overhaul?

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AFL-CIO, Bernie Sanders, Canada, Charles Schumer, currency manipulation, Debbie Dingell, Democrats, dispute resolution, Elizabeth Warren, environmental standards, labor standards, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Politico, Richard Neal, Robert Lighthizer, Rosa deLauro, rules of origin, Thea Lee, Trade, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, unions, Wilbur Ross, William Pascrell, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Usually, paying attention to instances of politicians and other public figures getting up on their soapboxes is a waste of time. Yesterday served up an exception: a press conference held by House Democrats in reaction to President Trump’s official decision to open talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The statements recorded in this Politico account offer some evidence as to which leaders on America’s Left are willing to work with the administration on trade policies that can help the working class voters Democrats still profess to champion, and those who will remain content to sit on the sidelines and take partisan potshots.

Reportedly, all of the House members who spoke at the event “said…they feared Trump would make only modest changes to NAFTA after blasting it as an economic disaster throughout last year’s presidential campaign.” The basis for these worries? The letter sent yesterday by new U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to Congressional leaders announcing the administration’s intention to open NAFTA talks with the two other signatories, Canada and Mexico. According to these House Democrats and some other trade critics, the document apparently was “short on details,” which many claimed indicated Trump’s intention simply to “tweak” rather than comprehensively overhaul the agreement.

All else equal, wondering about the president’s real intentions is anything but unreasonable. His personality, after all, is mercurial, and one of his major trade initiatives to date – the negotiations begun with Beijing following February’s summit with Chinese leader XiJinping – has legitimately disappointed advocates of the major course change he pledged during the campaign. (The other major trade initiative, scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, kept a leading campaign promise to the letter.) Moreover, the Lighthizer letter is indeed short on specifics.

But none of the participants in the press conference seems to have noticed that in previous statements –including reportedly to leading Democratic lawmakers, top Trump officials have emphasized the need for dramatic NAFTA changes.

For example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has described as high NAFTA-related priorities greatly tightening the pact’s rules of origin in order to incentivize more non-NAFTA manufacturing investment inside the free trade zone, and restructuring a dispute-resolution system that gives each signatory an equal vote even though the United States represents more than 85 percent of North America’s total economic output. Reinforcing this point was the Lighthizer letter’s contention that “establishing effective implementation and aggressive enforcement of the commitments made by our trading partners under our trade agreements is vital to the success of these agreements and should be improved in the context of NAFTA.”

Meanwhile, Lighthizer reportedly has told Senators that the administration is thinking of adding to NAFTA rules that would prohibit currency manipulation – a move that would set a valuable precedent for future trade deals. In addition, his letter mentioned the need to improve NAFTA’s labor and environmental protections. In my view, they’re largely unenforceable. But they’ve been a prime focus of Democratic Party trade policy positions for decades.

So given that background, it seems fair at this point to finger Connecticut’s Rosa deLauro, New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell, and Massachusetts’ Richard Neal as grandstanders. The former stressed the “tweaking” allegation. The latter two charged that “It was clear from the start that the administration was only interested in working with the Congressional Republican leadership in drafting this notice [the Lighthizer letter].”

I’d also include in this group several key Senate Democrats, including Leader Charles Schumer of New York, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of New York, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. They voted against Lighthizer’s confirmation despite his decades-long record of fighting predatory foreign trade practices both as Deputy U.S. Trade Representative during the Reagan administration, and as a trade lawyer representing domestic American producers.

More temperate in their judgments were Michigan’s Debbie Dingell, and the AFL-CIO’s Thea Lee. The former stated that she was “investing the time to understand where the consensus is.” The latter said, “We enter every negotiation in a good faith state of mind and we expect a lot from our government. Certainly candidate Trump made a lot of promises about fixing flawed trade agreements and looking out for American workers and good jobs, so we will hold him and his administration to that promise.”

I can’t think of a more reasonable position for politicians and other supporters of a movement that still styles itself as the “party of the common man [and woman].”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Good Economic News that Trump Has Missed

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bubble, bubble decade, business spending, CNBC, Commerce Department, Financial Crisis, GDP, gross domestic product, housing, inflation-adjusted growth, investment, Jeff Cox, personal consumption, real GDP, Trump, Wilbur Ross, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Here’s how badly the latest figures on U.S. economic growth (for the first quarter of this year) have been misunderstood: Even the Trump administration, which has displayed no hesitation to take credit for good economic news even when undeserved, failed to note a big possible silver lining.

As noted in last week’s coverage of these figures on gross domestic product (GDP), the inflation-adjusted growth figure reported by the Commerce Department in its initial read for the first quarter was a measly 0.69 percent. That’s the worst such performance since the 1.19 percent annualized contraction in the first quarter of 2014.

So it’s not entirely surprising that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross seized on this discouraging news to emphasize that “We need the President’s tax plan, regulatory relief, trade renegotiations and the unleashing of American energy sector to overcome the dismal economy inherited by the Trump Administration. Business and consumer sentiment is strong, but both must be released from the regulatory and tax shackles constraining economic growth.”

But especially given the rise in sentiment noted by Ross, it’s at least somewhat surprising that he didn’t make more of the strong rise in business spending revealed in the new GDP report. For it lends significant support to President Trump’s claim that his election is already liberated many of the “animal spirits” – i.e., a surge in business optimism – often needed to spur more hiring and especially more corporate spending on new plant and equipment.

For example, in absolute terms, such business spending rose sequentially by 9.1 percent at an annualized rate in the first quarter. That’s the fastest rate since the fourth quarter of 2013, when it jumped by 9.2 percent.

At the same time, back at the end of 2013, the economy expanded at a 3.90 percent real annual rate. In the first quarter of this year, after-inflation growth was only 0.69 percent annualized. So business spending punched far above its weight as a growth engine. As RealityChek regulars know, that’s an encouraging indication that the nation’s growth recipe is becoming more production oriented, and therefore healthier and more sustainable in the long run.

In fact, higher business spending accounted for all of the first quarter’s growth. (Other sectors of the economy contributed to and subtracted from the overall result, too, but their net effect was zero.) As a result, its relative contribution to expansion was its strongest since the first quarter of 2014, when such investment boosted real GDP by 0.84 percentage points but the economy actually contracted at a 1.19 percent annual rate.

And on a standstill basis, business investment in the first quarter represented its highest share of real GDP (13.34 percent) since the third quarter of 2015 (13.48 percent).

Not that one quarter’s results – which will be revised twice more in the next two months alone – are anywhere close to definitive. But the Trump administration had much more to crow about than it seemed to realize.

At the same time, the new GDP data showed that the economy remains way too personal consumption- and housing-heavy – the toxic combination whose bloat so powerfully inflated the bubbles that produced the previous decade’s global financial crisis.

As previously reported on RealityChek, at their pre-crisis peak, in the second quarter of 2005, the combined consumption and housing share of real GDP hit 73.27 percent. The comparable first quarter total was 73 percent even – not much lower. And that share was up slightly from the fourth quarter’s 72.95 percent.

So the United States is still a long way from achieving former President Obama’s goal of creating “an economy that’s built to last.” But from what we know of the first quarter’s growth this year, the economy made some progress that’s worth noting.

P.S. Partial credit for this post goes to CNBC’s Jeff Cox, whose report here first called my attention to the good business spending results.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Trump’s Budget Proposal is a Win for Trade Policy Realism

Tags

border adjustment, budget, Commerce Department, enforcement, exports, imports, Robert Lighthizer, tax reform, Trade, trade law, Trump, U.S. Trade Representative, Wilbur Ross, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Certainly since Donald Trump has been elected president, there’s been a tension even among his most supposedly hawkish trade policy advisers over basic objectives: Should the United States seek to solve its major trade-related problems mainly by promoting exports, or mainly by curbing imports? Of course, the two goals aren’t mutually exclusive. But the first suggests that the nation’s approach to trade will essentially be more of the same (albeit executed more competently), while the latter suggests a significant shift and is vigorously put into effect.

That’s one trade-related reason why Mr. Trump’s new budget proposal is so interesting and potentially important. If you believe that “money talks,” or “deeds count more than words” or any homilies to that effect, then it looks like that the tension has been resolved in favor of import limits – which would be good news indeed if it remains intact.

The reasons, as I’ve long written, are pretty simple, and should be much more obvious than they’ve been. First, for all its problems, the U.S. economy has been growing faster recently than most major world economies. And unlike the faster growers (mainly in the developing world), America’s growth isn’t export-led or -heavy. For that reason alone, its domestic market continues to be the world’s paramount emerging market.

Second, that relatively fast growth, combined with the ongoing export-heavy nature of most foreign economies means, and the huge and chronic American trade deficit, means that the size of the U.S. domestic market into which domestic producers can sell is enormous in absolute terms and indeed much bigger relative to foreign markets than widely realized. After all, this American market includes not only whatever growth the United States can generate going forward, but the large chunks of its market currently controlled by foreign competition.

Third, however much leverage the United States enjoys in global trade, and over foreign countries, its influence over its own market will always be much greater. And that goes double for countries with long records of sweeping protectionism.

Fourth, the domestic market is the market that domestic American producers should know best. Therefore, despite its undeniably impressive dynamism, these domestic producers have less to learn about customer preferences than is the case with foreign market.

For examples of the administration’s apparent ambivalence, simply check out statements made in the confirmation hearings of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative-designate Robert Lighthizer. Indeed, it’s easy to conclude that their stated bottom line endorses the export-focused approach.

But the new Trump budget document is sending the opposite message – and its declared spending priorities arguably matter more than even sworn testimony. Specifically, according to the Commerce Department section, the final budget

“Strengthens the International Trade Administration’s trade enforcement and compliance functions, including the anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations, while rescaling the agency’s export promotion and trade analysis activities.”

Not that this text is the end of the story, or even close. As widely recognized, the new budget statement is the first step in a lengthy process in which Congress will be heavily involved. Moreover, because so much of it is so controversial, and because the nation is so far from a consensus on official spending priorities, it’s entirely likely that the current budget priorities will simply wind up being carried over for the time being.

And as for trade policy specifically, Commerce Department funding will be far from the only determinant as to where the administration will put most of its energies. Just one example: the structure of whatever new or revised trade agreements it seeks will matter greatly as well. So will the fate of the border adjustability feature of the House Republican leadership’s tax reform proposals – which would both in effect penalize imports and subsidize exports. Moreover, because the U.S. trade law system is so (inevitably) slow-moving, episodic and reactive, relying exclusively or even mainly on this traditional trade enforcement tool will become a recipe for trade policy failure.    

But the Commerce budget priorities appear to be a straw in the wind that’s unmistakable – and because realistic, unmistakably welcome.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Where America Has Literally Been Asleep at the Switch on Trade

Tags

Buy American, Canada, Commerce Department, European Union, free trade agreements, FTAs, government procurement, Government Procurement Agreement, GPA, Japan, Jeff Merkley, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Norway, Politico, South Korea, Tammy Baldwin, Trade, Trump, Wilbur Ross, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Here’s a big, sincere shout-out to U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Tammy Baldwin (Illinois). Thanks to their insightful curiosity, Americans have just gotten evidence that their country’s trade policy is indeed as much of a disaster area as claimed by President Trump and other critics.

Their accomplishment? The two Democrats asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to look into how well Washington has been implementing a more than two-decade-old global trade agreement aimed at opening government procurement markets around the world. Also examined: the trade liberalization record of government procurement provisions of bilateral and regional trade agreements signed by the United States (like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA).

The findings were released last month (and alertly reported by Politico‘s trade correspondents), and make clear that the United States has been getting royally shafted. Moreover, these results have been inevitable both because the global deal was so poorly conceived from an American standpoint, and because literally no one in the U.S. trade policy-making apparatus has been tracking the results of either the global agreement or the relevant sections of the narrower trade deals agreement affecting literally trillions of dollars worth of actual and potential sales.

Even worse, the blithe assumption that other signatory countries has been scrupulously abiding by all of these procurement agreements has sharply limited America’s willingness to expand and tighten the Buy American rules that cover its own official purchases – in the process, passing up major opportunities for growth and job creation at a time of economic weakness. And P.S. This includes President Trump.

The GPA is a “plurilateral” agreement negotiated under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. In other words, accession by WTO members is voluntary. Still, the deal, which went into effect in 1996, currently encompasses 47 countries that are now committed to placing foreign enterprises and their own domestic entities on an equal footing when they compete for government contracts. Nine other WTO members are in the process of signing on. Most of America’s bilateral and regional trade agreements also prohibit discrimination in awarding these opportunities for supplying governments with goods and services. Consequently, 19 other countries have promised the United States to open their official procurement markets to the United States in return for America opening its own to them. (All of these governments have carved out various agreed on exemptions. And sub-national governments are covered by these deals as well.)

With stakes this high, you’d think that at some point the U.S. government would display reasonably consistent interest during the multi-decade lives of these trade agreements in whether they’ve been paying off. But according to the GAO researchers, you’d be wrong.

Even though the GPA requires detailed, annual reporting of procurement statistics by signatory governments, the GAO’s

“review of data that the United States and next five largest GPA parties [the European Union, Japan, Canada, South Korea, and Norway] submitted to the WTO for 2008 through 2013 found that a number of parties did not submit the reports annually, the submitted reports did not include all required data, and each party’s reports included inconsistencies that limit the data’s comparability. Further, a lack of common understanding on definitions of key terms has led to inconsistent reporting practices among the GPA parties, and a GPA statistical working group has made little progress in addressing such challenges.”

Some specific failings:

>”although Canada submitted annual notifications with central government procurement data for 2008 through 2013, the notifications did not include data on procurement by subcentral governments or by other government entities”;

>”Japan’s annual notifications have not included procurement by entities such as utilities and state-owned enterprises that are covered by the GPA”:

>”South Korea has not submitted notifications for any year except 2010, and Japan has not submitted a notification for 2012 although it did so for other years through 2013.”

>”Of the U.S. FTAs [free trade agreements] we reviewed, only NAFTA requires its parties to report annual statistics on government procurement; however, the last data exchange between the three NAFTA parties took place in 2005. As a result, information about the extent to which U.S. FTA partner governments open procurement to U.S. suppliers is not available.” [Emphasis added.]

The United States has been far from a whiz in reporting, either. But its failings have been much less excusable given all the evidence provided by the GAO showing that it’s opened its procurement markets much wider than any other GPA or FTA signatory. Despite the above data limitations, the GAO nonetheless felt confident in concluding that for 2010, “[T]he United States reported more than twice as much GPA-covered government procurement as the next five largest GPA parties combined, although total U.S. government procurement is less than the combined total for the other five parties.”

In money terms, the value of contracts opened to non-discriminatory bidding by the United States at all levels of government was $837 billion. The value of contracts opened by those five non-U.S. GPA parties that promised to liberalize the most in absolute terms was some $381 billion. Yet total government procurement in the United States that year was some $1.7 trillion, the GAO estimates. For the other five GPA signatories, it was much larger – $4.4 trillion.

Moreover, because of the aforementioned reporting failures, it’s not possible at all for the U.S. government, or the American people, to gauge procurement liberalization under free trade agreements – with the exception of Canada. But when their procurement budgets are added in, and duplication eliminated (e.g., for Canada), the total market that should be available to American business and workers at least in principle is $4.4 trillion. 

The GAO doesn’t conclude that U.S. trade partners are simply capitalizing on Washington’s indifference to flout their treat obligations. In fact, in one instance, it even tries to get them partly off the hook: “Many EU member states, as well as Japan and South Korea, have actual government expenditures smaller than the United States’ and are therefore likely to have more smaller-value individual procurement contracts that fall below the GPA threshold levels.” (Decisions on the smallest government contracts typically are one of the main GPA and FTA procurement carve-outs.)

But if so many foreign government contracts are too small to be opened for non-discriminatory bidding, then obviously these trade deals are too poorly structured to give American producers anything remotely like reciprocity. And more important, Washington so far has had no way of knowing judging by any measures whether non-discrimination in principle is being translated into non-discrimination in fact .

As Mr. Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, recently noted, “There’s not a lot of point making trade deals if you don’t enforce them.” He could have added that such enforcement is impossible without seeking and obtaining reliable data on results. Donald Trump’s predecessors have flunked these two crucial tests of American trade policy-making. Until he gets strong evidence to the contrary, it’s time for the president to take the logical next step, assume that the GPA and the FTA government procurement measures have been serious mistakes, and ignore them as thoroughly as America’s competitors evidently have.

Making News: Thom Hartmann Interview on Trump and Trade Now On-Line

Tags

China, Commerce Department, Making News, NAFTA, National Trade Council, North American Free Trade Agreement, Peter Navarro, Robert Lighthizer, RT America, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, Thom Hartmann, Trade, U.S. Trade Representative, Wilbur Ross

I’m pleased to announce that the video of my appearance last night on RT America’s The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann is on-line!  Click on this link to hear in full a great discussion of President-elect Trump’s plans for U.S. trade policy and how they promise to shake up American politics.  The segment starts at about the 15:30 mark.

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