Change course on U.S. trade policy

The 2006 election was the latest reminder that Americans are deeply concerned about our current trade regime and its effects on their economic well-being and their children’s futures. Across the country, from Iowa to New Hampshire, Wisconsin to Virginia, many of the majority-making freshman Democrats won by recognizing their voters’ experience-based opposition to staying the course on the failed Bush trade agenda.

Opposition to the war was necessary, but it was not sufficient. Pledges for a new trade policy and criticism of GOP incumbents’ votes for NAFTA and CAFTA became a differentiating issue, especially in districts comprised of socially conservative voters. In side-by-side districts, candidates who focused on trade and offshoring won while those in more likely pickup neighboring districts lost.

This fair-trade mandate provided a unique opportunity for Democrats to launch a new American trade agenda to replace the stalled Bush trade agenda comprised of continual expansions of the NAFTA-CAFTA model to more countries and expansion of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) scope and powers.

With the U.S. trade deficit having jumped from $100 billion to $800 billion, and real median wages flat at 1970s levels in no small part because three million — one in six — U.S. manufacturing jobs have been offshored during the NAFTA-WTO era to be replaced by lower-wage service jobs, a significant change in priorities is not just good politics, but a policy change vital to our country’s future strength and position in the world.

Consider the direct gains to working families, American firms and farmers if Democrats simply switched priorities away from Bush’s endless free trade agreements and onto implementing the key policies already being promoted by Democrats that are aimed at countering the increased offshoring of high-tech and high-wage service jobs, rebuilding our manufacturing base and avoiding the imminent absurdity of the United States becoming a net food importer:

•Use the enormous leverage we have as the world’s consumer market to condition access to our market on access to other countries’ markets; implement a value-added tax equalization measure so other countries’ exports do not obtain this enormous subsidy; and amend U.S. customs statutes that now bar counterfeit goods to also ban importation of the billions of dollars worth of immoral, sweatshop-made goods now pouring into our country. Each of these policies would directly counter our unsustainable trade deficit, which at 6 percent of GNP is slowing our growth and threatens U.S. and global economic stability; and each would revitalize our manufacturing base and provide a fair playing field for U.S. firms and workers.

•Take direct action now to counter further offshoring of U.S. jobs and investment, including prioritizing fast passage of the Patriot Corporation Act, which provides tax benefits to firms that create manufacturing and high-tech jobs here while closing tax loopholes that promote off-shoring; and ensuring that the consumer privacy protections upon which American rely apply to offshoring of consumers’ financial, medical and other private information by adopting policies Europe now employs to ban private-sector offshoring to countries that do not have equal consumer privacy protections.

•Strengthen “Buy America” and federal anti-offshoring rules for outsourced government work. Jobs created with government money are some of the only U.S. jobs over which Congress has direct authority in the global economy. Congress can ensure that our tax dollars remain circulating in our communities and build a market for U.S. goods.

•Implement the TABLE-SAF Act (To Assure Basic Levels of Examination and Safety in America’s Food Act), which allows importation of only that food that meets U.S. safety standards, and requires country-of-origin labeling and enhanced import inspection.

•In the next Congress, create a new mechanism for negotiating trade agreements so that we never again subject American workers, firms and farmers to the special-interest offshoring pacts hatched under “fast track” authority. Such a future fast track replacement must set binding objectives of what must and must never be in all U.S. trade pacts, and restore Congress’s constitutional authority over trade and accountability over negotiators by requiring Congress to approve the text of agreements before they can be signed.

These initiatives, and a comprehensive public oversight review of current trade pacts to identify and initiate reforms needed to ensure U.S. trade policy delivers benefits for all Americans, would be a good start in responding to the American public’s reasonable expectation for change.

SPECIAL SECTION: Trade
Standing up for American businesses, workers, farmers
We must have fair trade
Extending trade promotion authority
Voters in November demanded a new direction for trade
Goal: Protect intellectual property from piracy in China, other countries
Combating currency misalignment
Without TPA reauthorization, trade agenda will flounder
Don’t handcuff Congress through fast track