Business groups want Obama to focus on trade for job creation, economic growth

With the United States struggling to reach the goal of doubling exports within five years, a level set by the president in his address in 2010, manufacturers, especially, are urging policymakers to get more aggressive in finding ways to create jobs and boost economic growth.  

A trade report released on Friday showed that while U.S. exports grew last year, they increased at an anemic pace, a disturbing problem for a broad range of businesses. 

U.S. exports grew by only $66.7 billion, less than half the value of export growth between 2010 and 2011, Dempsey wrote.

The 4.9 percent increase is way off of the 15 percent increase needed to reach the goal of doubling exports within the next two years, she wrote.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, expects that Obama will reiterate the export goal, even though it is coming up short.

As she pointed out in a pre-address email, with two years left, the United States should be 60 percent of the way toward achieving this goal.

Instead, the U.S. International Trade Commission’s annual 2012 trade data released this weekend shows that at the current export-growth rate, the president’s goal won’t be achieved until 2032, Wallach said.

U.S. exports have faced strong headwinds from the continued financial crisis and looming recession in Europe. 

But Dempsey suggested that despite those hurdles, it is up to policymakers to ramp up efforts to increase U.S. exports. 

“Exports are critical to manufacturers in the United States and more substantial export growth is vital to retaining and creating jobs and economic grow domestically,” Dempsey wrote. 

She suggested that Washington tackle a much more robust trade and investment agenda that opens new markets, reduces costs and red tape that undermine competitiveness and ensures that all countries play by the international trade rules. 

Obama may touch on the administration’s new enforcement agency that is starting to pick up efforts to go after trade violators such as China and Russia, which is a new entrant into the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

“While progress was made with market-opening agreements over the last two years with South Korea, Colombia, Panama and Russia, businesses must look forward, not in reverse, in an increasingly challenging and competitive international economy,” Dempsey said. 

Despite all of that action, Wallach argues that data of trade with South Korea, Columbia and Panama, all deals signed in 2011, show that combined U.S. exports to the three countries fell 4 percent relative to the same months of 2011.

She said U.S. goods exports to Korea plummeted by 10 percent, and the trade deficit with Korea grew 26 percent. 

“Obama will claim that enacting more free trade agreements based on the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will boost exports and create American jobs,” she said.  

But she argues that the numbers show otherwise. 

She pointed to figures that show that the U.S. trade deficit excluding oil rose by 6 percent last year, to the largest non-oil gap in the last five years. 

The U.S. trade deficit with China broke all past records, topping $321 billion, she said. 

Still, Dempsey, like several other business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, are pressing for a renewal of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which expired in 2007. 

Dempsey also called on Congress to pass the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill (MTB), which was delayed in the last Congress, which manufacturers argue hurt U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.

“The time is now for the United States to work aggressively toward strong negotiating outcomes in all trade and investment negotiations, from information technology, trade facilitation and services talks to bilateral investment negotiations with China and India that were launched over four years ago,” she wrote.

“The time is now for the administration to put in place a much more effective export promotion plan, particularly with recent trade agreement partners and emerging markets.”