Working to Boost American Exports, Grow American Jobs Through Trade with the Asia-Pacific

[ProSense]

Working to Boost American Exports, Grow American Jobs Through Trade with the Asia-Pacific

Posted by Ambassador Ron Kirk on November 14, 2009 at 05:00 PM EST

On Saturday in Singapore, I spoke to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit on behalf of President Obama. In my remarks to this gathering of more than 800 business leaders from across the Asia-Pacific region, I spoke of the robust and beneficial trade relationships that the United States enjoys with our 20 fellow APEC members – 61 percent of total American manufacturing exports are destined for APEC economies, and roughly 3.7 million American jobs are supported by those exports – and about the potential to gain even more job-creating opportunities for American workers, families, and businesses by increasing engagement with and exports to our partners in this fast-growing region.

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I talked about the progress made at this week’s APEC ministerial meeting on increasing services trade within APEC, promoting trade in cutting-edge environmental goods and services, and making it easier for businesses and entrepreneurs across the Asia-Pacific to take advantage of market opportunities.

I echoed the President’s call for the United States and its trading partners to work toward economic growth that is both balanced and sustainable. And I spoke of the opportunities presented to American workers, farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and service providers by the United States’ engagement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, announced by President Obama on Saturday morning.

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Engagement in the Asia-Pacific region is vital to America’s trading future. If we want to create the jobs Americans need, we must gain further access to Asia-Pacific markets. As I told hundreds of business leaders in Singapore on Saturday, we must work together to bring home the benefits of trade.

[depakid]

1. That giant sucking sound you hear will be more American jobs shipped overseas

along with downward pressure on wages. But that's OK. Republicans, blues dogs and their bankers think wages are too high in this country anyway.

[Deja Q]

2. Well, our taxes pay their wages... and their bailouts...

I think they're better off coming back to Earth and regaining consciousness.

[depakid]

8. In fairness, some states like Washington, Oregon and Callifornia will probably see a net increase

Other states won't be so fortunate.

[Owl]

3. Stop buying crap from China.

[tblue]

6. We all should. I always look to see where stuff is made and try not to buy Made in China.

I NEVER buy any chemical/cosmetics made there.

[divideandconquer]

4. Good luck with that!

[tblue]

5. So China's gonna outsource their low-skill jobs to us, I guess.

Oy gevalt!

[Owl]

7. Let's try buying and demanding products built by US Americans on US soil.

[ipaint]

9. Lies, and more lies, deja vu.

"I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the
first five years of its impact. And I believe that that is many more
jobs than will be lost, as inevitably some will be as always happens
when you open up the mix to a new range of competition.

NAFTA will generate these jobs by fostering an export
boom to Mexico; by tearing down tariff walls which have been lowered
quite a bit by the present administration of President Salinas, but
are still higher than Americans.

Already Mexican consumers buy more per capita from the
United States than other consumers in other nations. Most Americans
don't know this, but the average Mexican citizen -- even though wages
are much lower in Mexico, the average Mexican citizen is now spending
$450 per year per person to buy American goods. That is more than the
average Japanese, the average German, or the average Canadian buys;
more than the average German, Swiss and Italian citizens put together.

So when people say that this trade agreement is just
about how to move jobs to Mexico so nobody can make a living, how do
they explain the fact that Mexicans keep buying more products made in
America every year? Go out and tell the American people that.
Mexican citizens with lower incomes spend more money -- real dollars,
not percentage of their income -- more money on American products than
Germans, Japanese, Canadians. That is a fact. And there will be
more if they have more money to spend. That is what expanding trade
is all about.

Many Americans are still worried that this agreement will
move jobs south of the border because they've seen jobs move south of
the border and because they know that there are still great
differences in the wage rates. There have been 19 serious economic
studies of NAFTA by liberals and conservatives alike; 18 of them have
concluded that there will be no job loss.

Businesses do not choose to locate based solely on wages.
If they did, Haiti and Bangladesh would have the largest number of
manufacturing jobs in the world. Businesses do choose to locate based
on the skills and productivity of the work force, the attitude of the
government, the roads and railroads to deliver products, the
availability of a market close enough to make the transportation costs
meaningful, the communications networks necessary to support the
enterprise. That is our strength, and it will continue to be our
strength. As it becomes Mexico's strength and they generate more
jobs, they will have higher incomes and they will buy more American
products."

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT CLINTON,
PRESIDENT BUSH, PRESIDENT CARTER, PRESIDENT FORD,
AND VICE PRESIDENT GORE
IN SIGNING OF NAFTA SIDE AGREEMENTS

http://www.historycentral.com/Documents/Clinton/SigningNaFTA.html

[ProSense]

11. Thanks for posting Clinton's statement.

Obama has to fix that.

[slipslidingaway]

10. Thread in GD...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7015666&mesg_id=7015666

[slipslidingaway]

12. Costly Trade With China: Millions of U.S. jobs displaced with net job loss in every state

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp188/

"...False promises

Proponents of China's entry into the WTO frequently claimed that it would create jobs in the United States, increase U.S. exports, and improve the trade deficit with China. President Clinton claimed that the agreement allowing China into the WTO, which was negotiated during his administration, "creates a win-win result for both countries" (Clinton 2000, 9). He argued that exports to China "now support hundreds of thousands of American jobs" and that "these figures can grow substantially with the new access to the Chinese market the WTO agreement creates" (Clinton 2000, 10). Others in the White House, such as Kenneth Liberthal, the special advisor to the president and senior director for Asia affairs at the National Security Council, echoed Clinton's assessment:

Let's be clear as to why a trade deficit might decrease in the short term. China exports far more to the U.S. than it imports the U.S….It will not grow as much as it would have grown without this agreement and over time clearly it will shrink with this agreement.2
Promises about jobs and exports misrepresented the real effects of trade on the U.S. economy: trade both creates and destroys jobs. Increases in U.S. exports tend to create jobs in the United States, but increases in imports tend to destroy jobs as imports displace goods that otherwise would have been made in the United States by domestic workers..."


Links to votes on the China Trade bill and more...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1777600&mesg_id=1777600

[ProSense]

13. That's a 2007 article. The President hasn't even announced the policy yet. n/t

[slipslidingaway]

15. This is from 2000, before the vote on the China MFN bill...

good to look back and remember what the people were promised by the last Democratic President.

:shrug:

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/webfeatures_viewpoints_chinatrade_jf_051800tap/

"Congressional approval of permanent normal trade relations with China would be a tragic mistake.

First, it would signal to the world that the United States has abandoned the cause of putting worker rights and environmental standards into international economic agreements.

The Chinese government's record of oppression is well known. Its authoritarian blend of state control and privatization of public assets to elites (a la Russia and Mexico) has brutally repressed workers to keep labor costs low in the pursuit of expanding exports. Markets have not made the Chinese leaders more humane. The State Department's own 1999 human rights report on China concludes that the Chinese government's "poor human rights record deteriorated markedly throughout the year, as the government intensified efforts to suppress dissent, particularly organized dissent."

Under these conditions, U.S. sponsorship of China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) reduces to zero the chances of adding any worker and environmental protections to balance the investor protections in the WTO system. Ironically, it will strengthen the arguments of those who want to abolish the WTO rather than to reform it.

Second, the China deal will encourage U.S. multinationals to outsource production -- for the purpose of importing back to the United States -- to a country where wages are suppressed at the point of a bayonet. As in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) debate, the China lobby promises vast markets for U.S. goods. But the NAFTA experience taught us that the real prize was not the phantom Mexican middle class; it was the Mexican worker with high productivity and no bargaining power. A vote for the U.S.-China pact is a vote to exacerbate the already huge U.S. trade deficit with China -- $70 billion and rising.

The China lobby also argues that the benefits of greater trade override consideration of human rights in China and the loss of manufacturing jobs here. But the claim of great benefits does not pass the laugh test. The best the Clinton Administration could come up with is a "study" by the International Trade Commission, using an economic model embodying every possible favorable assumption to the deal. Among other omissions, it ignored the impact of outsourcing and a Chinese devaluation. Despite this rosy scenario, it managed to find benefits to the United States amounting to a grand total of $1.7 billion. In a $9 trillion dollar economy, this is less than the statistical error in calculating U.S. gross domestic product!

The false claims involved in selling this deal have been shameless..."


Trade in Goods (Imports, Exports and Trade Balance) with China
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[slipslidingaway]

16. Kucinich had it right back in 2000...

http://kucinich.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=1466#Other trade issues: Permanent MFN status for China

"Other trade issues: Permanent MFN status for China

Contrary to what certain special interests said to Capitol Hill, it was neither necessary nor desirable to grant China permanent Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status. Instead, Congress could and should continue to review China's trading status on an annual basis.

Permanent MFN was not necessary -- The WTO does not require that the U.S. grant China permanent MFN. In fact, the international trade agreement only requires that China receive MFN, but it does not specify that the award must be on a permanent basis. We could continue to review China's trading status on an annual basis and satisfy the WTO. So long as the U.S. does not allow the status to lapse, we would be in compliance with international trade obligations. There is no legal reason requiring Congress to give China permanent MFN status. This isn't just my legal opinion - it’s also that of the Secretary of Commerce during the last administration, William Daley. At a news conference on December 16, 1999, Secretary Daley admitted to a reporter for a Washington trade journal that permanent MFN is not legally necessary. However, the Administration "emphatically" wanted permanent status.

Permanent MFN is not desirable -- Permanent MFN for China has cost the U.S. the best leverage we have to influence China to enact worker rights, human rights and religious rights and protections. At the current time, the U.S. buys about 40 percent of China's exports, making it a consumer with a lot of clout. So long as the U.S. annually continued to review China's trade status, we would potentially have had the ability to use access to the U.S. market as leverage for gains in worker and human rights. But once China was given permanent MFN, we lost that leverage, and China will now be free to attract multinational capital on the promise of super low wages, medieval workplace conditions and prison labor. Recent history shows that the current Chinese regime is completely incapable of reform on its own.

Consider the case of the 1992 Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and China on prison labor, when China agreed to take measures to halt the export of products made with forced labor. According to a recent U.S. State Department report, "In all cases , the Ministry of Justice refused the request, ignored it, or simply denied the allegations without further elaboration." If Congress gives up its annual review of China's trade status, Congress will be unable to do anything about worker rights there.

Furthermore, giving China permanent MFN will be harmful to the U.S. economy, since the record trade deficit with China (and attendant problems such as loss of U.S. jobs, and lower average wages in the U.S.) will worsen. For 2000, the trade deficit was nearly $84 billion. Now that China has been awarded permanent MFN and is close to WTO membership, the trade deficit will worsen. In a September 30, 1999 report, the U.S. International Trade Commission concluded that China's accession to the WTO would cause "an increase in the U.S. trade deficit with China".

Conclusion -- There was no legal requirement to award China permanent MFN. Permanent MFN will be a drag on the U.S. economy and has cost us the best leverage we have to promote justice in China and throughout the world."

[slipslidingaway]

14. China's Role as U.S. Lender Alters Dynamics for Obama

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=496105&mesg_id=496105

Source: New York Times

When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker.

That stark fact — China is the largest foreign lender to the United States — has changed the core of the relationship between the United States and the only country with a reasonable chance of challenging its status as the world’s sole superpower.

The result: unlike his immediate predecessors, who publicly pushed and prodded China to follow the Western model and become more open politically and economically, Mr. Obama will be spending less time exhorting Beijing and more time reassuring it.

In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president’s budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.

“They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit,” one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.

It is a long way from the days when President George W. Bush hectored China about currency manipulation, or when President Bill Clinton exhorted the Chinese to improve human rights.

Mr. Obama has struck a mollifying note with China. He pointedly singled out the emerging dynamic at play between the United States and China during a wide-ranging speech in Tokyo on Saturday that was meant to outline a new American relationship with Asia..."

[Oregone]

17. Hurray. Growing more Walmart jobs

Hell, if enough people make money selling Chinese shit, maybe they can afford to buy their own

[Jeneral2885]

18. Which ever party

American is still the proponent of neo-liberalism which which such a sad case

[bvar22]

19. Would you like some fries with that?

The DLC New Team
Pro-LABOR Democrats Need NOT Apply

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

[ClarkUSA]

20. No pact is signed yet & the WH has been criticized for "protectionism" by Mexico's Prez recently.

'President Barack Obama said in Tokyo the U.S. will restart talks to potentially take part in a regional Asia-Pacific free trade agreement known as the Trans Pacific Partnership that currently includes Singapore, Brunei, Chile and New Zealand... Mr. Obama will fly to Singapore later Saturday for an APEC leaders summit. Ahead of his arrival, Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized the Obama administration for failing to open its borders to Mexican trucks as required under the North American Free Trade agreement.

"Protectionism is killing North American companies," Mr. Calderon said at a business event on the sidelines of the APEC summit. "The American government is facing political pressure that has not been counteracted."'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125817200356748397.html?mod=article-outset-box

Countries in the Trans-Pacific Pact include New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Chile. Policy has yet to be agreed upon but I am certain that unions will have a big say. Anything that can boost American exports in a responsible way is good news.