From The Washington Post, “Jobs summit underscores dilemma“:

Obama says he does not have the money for the plan many of his liberal supporters say packs the biggest employment punch — direct federal investment in job creation. Instead, he came close to embracing a to-do list for the private sector that sounded rather familiar: weatherization, small-business incentives, regulatory and other help for exporters, and tax credits for employers who hire new workers.

Obama said the proposals could create jobs immediately, while providing long-term benefit at a relatively small expense to the federal government. “Overall, we generated a lot of important ideas,” he said. “Some of them, I think, can translate immediately into administration plans and, potentially, legislation.”

Regulatory and other help for exporters? U.S. Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg co-chaired one of the break-out sessions, “Expanding Job Opportunities for America’s Workers Through Exports,” and the NAM believes the Eximbank is an important, effective supporter of private-sector exporters. Indeed, the head of one company that works effectively with the Eximbank is quoted in the Post story. Air Tractor of Olney, Texas, a manufacturer of ag planes (for purposes like spraying and seeding), has been featured as an Eximbank success story as it reaches into South American markets. (PPT slide from Eximbank’s 2009 conference.)

David Ickert, a senior executive of Air Tractor, a Texas firm that manufactures planes used in agriculture and fire suppression, said he would like to see the administration do more to free up financing for export-oriented firms.

“Exporting is one of the areas that has a lot more potential,” he said. “It can create jobs and does not cost a lot of money to fund. There just has not been enough attention paid to it from a policy standpoint.

Right!

The lack of attention — or rather, effort — has also been a problem with the three free trade agreements still pending which, if enacted, would quickly lower trade barriers to U.S. exporters. The White House should lead its export-related jobs creation by demanding Congressional approval of the FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

Commerce Secretary Locke is a stalwart supporter of expanding trade, so these comments are especially disappointing. From Associated Press, “US commerce secretary: Trade pacts must wait“:

SINGAPORE (AP) — Trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama won’t be put before Congress until it grapples first with President Barack Obama’s pressing legislative goals, the U.S. commerce secretary said Friday.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said Obama has an ambitious high-priority legislative agenda focusing on health care, financial regulation and alternative energy.

“Trade agreements are going to have to wait,” he said at a luncheon hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. “Right now, the administration is focused on a very aggressive and very tight legislative agenda.”

This is a bad message in many ways, and its timing is terrible.

Postponing action invites permanent inaction on the trade agreements. President Obama’s legislative agenda is never going to be finished. That’s the nature of legislative agendas. If the President succeeds in winning Congressional approval of health care, financial regulation and cap-and-trade legislation, the resulting higher taxes, increased regulations and expanded power of the federal government will produce so many unintended consequences that legislative fixes will be demanded. At the same time, changing conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to require an executive branch agenda for Congress.

Delays are also deadly. In his remarks to the Japan Society of Indiana on Wednesday, NAM President John Engler noted:

The United States and Peru signed a Free Trade Agreement in December 2007. That’s the last bilateral trade agreement the U.S. has actually put into effect.

Since then, the EU, Canada, Korea and Japan have jointly completed or are negotiating 31 separate Free Trade Agreements that cover 80 countries.

The United States already standing on the sidelines as other countries create more advantageous trade relationships with one another. Now the Administration would have us head back to the locker room.

The message also undercuts the President as he prepares to meet major trade partners and competitors in Japan, China and Korea. How can he pressure the Chinese to correct the trade imbalance (see yesterday’s post) when the Administration is at the same time saying trade is not one of its priorities? Most observers say the votes are there to enact at least the Colombia and Panama FTAs, and inaction thus appears guided by other domestic political considerations, which is to say, playing up to organized labor. It’s difficult for the President to tell China’s leaders to pay less attention to its own domestic politics on trade when it’s domestic politics appearing to determine the Administration’s trade agenda.

Finally, jobs. President Obama announced plans for a December “jobs summit” this week and there’s talk of another stimulus bill to boost jobs creation.

But delaying action on these pending free trade agreements takes one of your game-changing jobs-creating players off the field. In his Indianapolis remarks, the NAM’s Engler reported key facts: “Last year, Indiana exported $27 billion of goods. About 90 percent of those exports were manufactured goods. Nearly one in every five Indiana factory workers owes his or her job to exports.”

That’s a jobs agenda right there — exporting more. Get back in the game, Mr. President, and make the free trade agreements a priority.

From Dow-Jones, September 29, “US Secy Locke: Colombia Trade Pact Not Likely Ratified In ’09“:

SANTIAGO (Dow Jones)–The U.S. Congress won’t likely ratify a free trade agreement with Colombia this year as it’s currently focusing on health care reform and energy-related legislation, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said Tuesday.

“It’s pretty doubtful” that the pact will be ratified this year, although the Obama administration is pushing forward with this agreement and similar ones with South Korea and Panama, the secretary said, noting that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk is heading up the effort to conclude the trade deals.

Speaking to reporters in Santiago on the sidelines of the third Americas Competitiveness Forum, Locke said the U.S. aims to strenghten its trade ties with Latin America as the U.S. and Latin economies have greatly benefitted from existing ties.

“It’s in everyone’s economic interest to have trade agreements and lower tariff barriers,” Locke said. He added that President Barack Obama has indicated the U.S. is seeking an equal partnership with the countries in the region.

Secretary Locke and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk have been excellent evangelists for the economic benefits of trade agreements, but we’ve yet to see any of the advocacy converted into action.

President Obama spoke to two labor events in September, the AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati and the AFL-CIO national convention in Pittsburgh. At neither event did he even mention the word “trade.” Organized labor could be forgiven for thinking the unions have been given a de facto veto over White House utterances or Congressional action on the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

It hardly seems like the political environment will improve for expanding trade in 2010, when labor uses its campaign cash to bludgeon candidates into toeing their line.

See also the Investor’s Business Daily editorial, “Serving Castro First“:

On the very day Colombia was humiliated by Locke’s comments in Chile, the State Department announced it had sent acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Bisa Williams to Havana to negotiate new agreements with the ruling Castro oligarchy…[snip]

So why isn’t Colombia getting the same “pace of steps”? All it gets are sorry excuses. The U.S.-Colombia trade treaty was signed in 2006 and is ready to go. Its only barrier is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who doesn’t want a vote because she knows it will pass.

No country has ever been strung along so cynically.

Dennis Hightower, the recently confirmed Deputy Secretary of Commerce, gave a very strong pro-trade speech yesterday at Commerce’s “Trade North America” conference in Detroit (where NAM President John Engler also spoke). Excerpt:

I have only been on the job at the Commerce Department for a month, but that has given me plenty of time to identify one of the key challenges our department and the entire Obama administration faces:

Keeping trade flowing freely and fairly across our borders.

Canada and Mexico are our first and third largest trading partners—accounting for 32 percent of our total goods exports.

In North America, the U.S., Canada and Mexico—conduct nearly $2.7 billion dollars in trilateral goods trade each day.

Our economic prosperity and the jobs of millions of workers in North America depend on this trade relationship continuing to flourish.

But during these difficult economic times, we have inevitably seen a troubling rise in protectionist sentiment around the world.

Down that path lies more economic pain for us all.

Lots of good comments also regarding export controls and intellectual property protections.

So we have the Administration in favor of trade, Majority Leader Hoyer today once against endorsing Panama and Colombia trade agreements, and a big Democratic majority in the Senate.

Why the delay?

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer spoke this a.m. to the National Association of Manufacturers, the NAM’s Public Affairs Steering Committee meeting today at the J.W. Marriott.

His remarks, about 28 minutes worth, were well received: He gave a quick economic overview emphasizing the public’s unease, lauded the President’s speech last night on health care and urged the NAM to work toward health care reform.

The two passages we found notable were his strong endorsement of action on the pending free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama (Korea’s problematic, he said), and his stressing the need to bring the deficits under control. On trade:

I am very hopeful and I have urged publically some of my friends in my party, in the caucus and around who are somewhat concerned, we ought to pass Colombia and Panama.

Korea is more problematic, mainly because of automobiles and beef. And with beef, you saw the premier tried to solve, the prime minister, tried to solve the beef problem had a very big reaction in his country.

And ….

I’ve told my friends who are not in that place, I said, look, if a manufacturer can make more profit for stockholders, which is their obligation to do, maximize their profits who invested their capital in growing a business, then they’re going to do so.

Just as the shoe manufacturers moved to Massachusetts down to Alabama or South Carolina, or the textile manufacturers moved, people move to where they can best advantage their businesses. You can’t lock people in.

What we can do, however, is to provide for mechanism whereby this international community, this “flat world” that Tom Friedman talks about, we have as level of playing field as we can get. And that means opening up trade. And so I’m a big proponent of Panama and Colombia.

And …

I believe that once we get health care one way or another, I think we’ll going to pass a health care bill, I think we will in fact move on to address trade.

Here’s an .mp3 file of his trade remarks.

Perhaps the lowest moment of Congress 2008 occurred when the Speaker of the House decided to prevent consideration of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Act, blowing up the long-established congressional process for reviewing FTAs under Trade Promotion Authority. The Speaker abandoned accepted protocols for hearings and floor action, simply setting the trade agreement aside with the approval of her Democratic caucus. The Colombia agreement, as with the pacts with Panama and Korea, has never even had committee hearings, much less an up-and-down vote on the House floor.

The inescapable message to the rest of the world was that even if you negotiate in good faith with the government of the United States, the U.S. legislative branch feels no responsibility to act on the results. Make concessions on issues close to the heart of national sovereignty — environmental and labor standards — and you will receive nothing in return save an appearance of weakness at home.

So as uncertainty roils global finances, the U.S. is now perceived as an unreliable negotiating partner, a country where political interests come first. The clear benefits of expanded trade — and exports have kept the U.S. economy afloat this year — are sacrificed even as the U.S. and global economy slide toward recession.

Any reason for hope?

President Bush is keeping the faith, in his speech this morning calling for Congressional enactment of the Colombia trade agreement (presumably in a lameduck session).

Senator McCain made a good pitch for the benefits of the U.S.-Colombia FTA during Wednesday’s presidential debate at Hofstra (transcript). Unfortunately, Senator Obama stuck to organized labor’s anti-Colombia talking points, for which the Wall Street Journal today took him to task in an editorial, “Obama Makes it Up.”

If Colombia hopes to keep spending on judicial improvements and better law enforcement, it needs an expanding economy. In addition to misrepresenting the country’s progress on reducing violence, Mr. Obama has never explained how denying Colombians the FTA will help the country reduce violence. Maybe this is because he knows he’s merely repeating union distortions.

Consistent advocates of free trade like the Washington Post are reduced to optimistic speculation that Senator Obama’s trade criticisms are election-oriented rhetoric. In its editorial endorsement of Obama for president today, the Post wrote:

We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have heard from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the understanding of the benefits of trade reflected in his writings. A silver lining of the financial crisis may be the flexibility it gives Mr. Obama to override some of the interest groups and members of Congress in his own party who oppose open trade, as well as to pursue the entitlement reform that he surely understands is needed.

Yes, we can only hope.