President Obama Offers Free Trade as Reluctantly as Possible

K. William Watson President Obama has proven once again that he is his own worst enemy on trade policy. Despite expectations that he would make a strong push for trade promotion authority (TPA), President Obama offered only quick mention of trade in this week’s State of the Union address.  Although he did ask Congress to pass TPA to help him complete free trade agreements, the president backed up that request with some of the weakest arguments possible. I’ll give you the entire two paragraphs here: 21st century businesses, including small businesses, need to sell more American products overseas. Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages. But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field. That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but fair. Look, I’m the first one to admit that past trade deals haven’t always lived up to the hype, and that’s why we’ve gone after countries that break the rules at our expense. But 95 percent of the world’s customers live outside our borders, and we can’t close ourselves off from those opportunities. More than half of manufacturing e...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs