Better late than never, but there is more to do on exports

With unemployment stuck above 9 percent and more than 14 million Americans looking for jobs, Washington needs to put aside politics and move quickly to implement practical solutions to put Americans to work. While Republicans and Democrats struggle to make progress on common-sense ideas like regulatory relief, pro-growth tax reform and increased domestic energy production, there are three sure bipartisan job creators that are truly “shovel-ready” — the export expanding agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. 

{mosads}Using the Obama administration’s own metrics, these three agreements will create more than 250,000 American jobs. Not moving on this opportunity not only forfeits those potential new jobs, but also threatens the loss of an additional 380,000 American jobs, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce study, due to a loss of market share as Washington allows others such as the European Union and Canada to get in line ahead of us. 

The administration, economists across the political spectrum and leadership on both sides of the aisle agree that exports play a vital role in growing our economy and getting people back to work. Our goal should be to ensure that American workers, farmers and service providers get fair access to the 95 percent of the world’s consumers outside of our borders. We need a level playing field for our exports. In my state of Ohio, this includes anything from Chrysler’s Jeep Wrangler, produced in Toledo, to more than $1 billion of soybeans grown for export, architectural services products designed and sold globally by 130 employees at NBBJ in Columbus, and jet engines engineered at General Electric in Cincinnati. Knocking down unfair barriers starts with these three pending export agreements. 

By large margins, Americans feel our country is on the wrong track and that China and others are beating us in the global marketplace. In this case, they are right — the European Union, Canada and many other nations are busy pursuing and finalizing export agreements that take away market share from American businesses. Delay is pushing the United States behind — and our workers are losing out. Over the summer, South Korea and the European Union along with Colombia and Canada signed agreements, putting U.S. exports at a further disadvantage. 

The Colombia-Canada agreement went into force on Aug. 15. The U.S. has been falling behind in the Colombian market. U.S. market share for corn, wheat and soybeans in Colombia has dropped from more than 70 percent to less than 30 percent in recent years. That drop is a direct result of our trading partners moving ahead while the U.S. sits back and slow-walks these important export agreements. The Korean-EU agreement went into force on July 1, and already EU exports to South Korea have expanded. 

Congress and President Obama spend too much time focusing on what we disagree on and too little moving forward on bipartisan legislative proposals to get the economy moving. To enable the trade agreements to get where we are today, a number of Republicans stepped forward and worked with the White House on their insistence that Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) be part of the package. TAA acts as a safety net for displaced workers — including thousands of Ohioans — and these reforms help hard-hit workers get job training assistance at a difficult time for our economy. I tried to provide even more assistance to our country’s export expansion by providing Obama and future presidents with the necessary trade promotion authority to negotiate his new trade opening agreements, but I was rebuffed by many congressional Democrats.  

Breaking the impasse on these three trade agreements was an important step in the right direction. But, this can’t be the only step the president takes as we insist on enforcement of trade laws, work to make our economy more competitive and engage in negotiations to knock down other barriers to trade to help our workers, farmers and service providers. 

Portman is a member of the Senate Budget Committee.