U.S Trade Representative Ron Kirk appeared before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday to formally present the President’s 2010 Trade Policy Agenda, and as expected, express support for passage of the three long-pending free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Korea and Panama were high on the agenda for Senators.

“The FTA’s are a priority,” Kirk told the lawmakers. “We have not given up on any of those.” (Kirk’s statement.)

The ambassador was challenged by both Chairman Baucus and Ranking Member Grassley, who warned him that the United States will lose out to our competitors in Europe and other nations if we don’t advance the pending FTAs with Colombia, Korea and Panama. The goal of doubling exports in five years will be strongly aided by passing these pending FTAs, Kirk heard more than once.

As far as that competition from Europe and other countries, the European Union is certainly not letting any grass grow under its feet. On Tuesday, the EU announced the start of FTA negotiations with Vietnam. On Wednesday, the EU announced the start of FTA negotiations with Singapore. And, of course, the EU is looking to enact its FTA with Korea in the next few months.

The U.S. has an FTA with Singapore, and Vietnam would be included in the Obama Administration’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA –- the first round of negotiations for the TPP begins in mid-March.

This news all comes on the heels of the announcement by the EU Tuesday that it has concluded its FTA negotiations with Colombia and Peru, and is looking to a May 2010 signing with entry into force by 2012.

Colombia is also nearly finished negotiating an FTA with Canada.

Canada, by the way, is negotiating an FTA with the European Union. And, of course, Canada and Korea are negotiating an FTA too.

There seems to be a trend here: Strong manufacturing countries, whose industries compete with manufacturing in America for exports to these markets, are all fiercely pursuing trade deals with the same group of nations. If past trends continue, once they conclude negotiations, Europe and Canada will move quickly to enact these agreements. So will Peru, Colombia, and Korea.

From Reuters, reporting on remarks by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer after his speech today at the National Press Club. “We ought to pass them,” he said of the still-pending Free Trade Agreements with Colombia and Panama. The deal with South Korea needs more work.

“Basically, however, I believe that America can compete with the rest of the world if we have a level and fair trading field. So I’m one of those that believes that trade is helpful and creates jobs over the long run.”

Yes, Hoyer said pretty much the same thing when he spoke to the National Association of Manufacturers last September, but he was right then and he’s right now.

Reporters asked NAM President John Engler about trade today on a conference call about the Milken Institute study, “Jobs for America.” Engler said any discussion about jobs in the President’s State of the Union should embrace trade expansion: “We think if they’re serious on the jobs front, they have to look at trade. We’ve got a lot of companies that send a big amount of their production abroad for sale.”

More on Hoyer’s remarks, with a strangely inclusive lead, from AFP.

Earlier today, Bloomberg moved a larger piece about the Obama Administration’s pallid trade agenda, reporting the disappointment of major exporters like Caterpillar. Also, the following seems like a fair assessment:

[Obama’s] trade agenda remains modest, said William Reinsch, president of the Washington-based National Foreign Trade Council, which represents exporters such as Boeing Co.

There’s a split in the administration between economic advisers who support more trade pacts and political operatives who say doing so would enrage Democratic lawmakers and their union supporters, Reinsch said in an interview.

“So far the political people are winning,” he said.

Yeah. Jobs or politics, politics or jobs.

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.

NAM President John Engler was in Indiana Wednesday and traveled to Greensburg for a tour of the Honda plant there. The Republic newspaper of nearby Columbus was on hand and published a page one piece, “State coped well with downturn.”

The Honda plant is notable because it manufactures the natural gas-powered Civic GX there. In addition, in September Honda announced that the plant would build Honda Civic Sedans for sale in Mexico and export to 22 Latin American and Caribbean nations. In his remarks last evening at the Japan-America Society of Indiana, Engler recalled an earlier visit to the Subaru plant in Lafayette, Ind., which also exports to Latin America.

So there are more examples of U.S. plants, employees and communities that would benefit from enactment of the Colombia and Panama Free Trade Agreements, making their Indiana-manufactured products more competitive abroad.

Interesting, too, that the talk turned so quickly to the need for skilled employees, even during an economic downturn.

Rick Schostek, vice president of Honda Manufacturing of Indiana, said nearly 30,000 applied for about 1,000 openings in 2008, allowing plant managers to carefully select workers.

Plant officials looked for workers with a basic foundation in math and reading and wanted people who could work in a team environment and had good problem-solving skills.

“We can teach our processes here,” Schostek said. “We just need that basic foundation.”

Engler said manufacturers’ success depends primarily on workers’ education.

“And that doesn’t necessarily mean a four-year college degree,” Engler said.

“It can be an associate’s degree or specialized training.”

Engler also suggested that high schools start training students interested in manufacturing so that those who want to go directly to a job after graduation will be better prepared.

The testimony has been posted from yesterday’s Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing, “A World of Opportunity: Promoting Export Success for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses,” and the committee also has a nice selection of quotes here.

From Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who chaired the hearing by the Subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion: “Exporting is literally a world of opportunity. Over 95 percent of the world’s customers are located outside the United States. Increasing our exports will mean more business, more jobs and more growth for the American economy.”

And from the manufacturer who testified, Tom J. Wollin, Director of International and Government Sales, Mattracks, Inc.,* of Karlstad, Minn.:

There are roadblocks for U.S. companies, big and small, when they export products internationally. Tariffs, duties, and value-added taxes can make the costs of U.S. products extremely prohibitive. For example, an American product that has a dealer cost of $35,000 when it leaves our shores can have a final cost reaching $60,000 to $70,000 when it reached its destination! U.S. innovation and product quality can overcome many obstacles, but a doubling in price can be crippling. The removal of these types of trade barriers are also needed to ensure new and continued sales growth internationally.

That’s a critical point. For all the many good and helpful government programs to promote manufacturing exports, sales must be cost-competitive. That’s why Congress’ resistance to enacting the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea is so discouraging. By ratifying the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, for example, Congress could quickly lower costs of U.S. exports to that country by an average of 14 percent.

* A plug for Mattracks — What a great product! A “rubber-track conversion system [that ] transforms most 4×4 vehicles into a true all-terrain vehicle equipped with rubber tracks that will go almost anywhere and bring you back!”

The leaders of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh might make headway in promoting world prosperity by reducing trade barriers and encouraging aggressive exporters like Germany and China to focus more on consumption, but after they have come and gone, our domestic challenges will remain. We are struggling to emerge from the longest and deepest recession since The Great Depression, and though there are signs of recovery, we are not out of the woods yet.

Manufacturing as always is a bellwether for the economy. The manufacturing dynamic where raw materials are forged into finished products is where our economy creates wealth. When the economy turns down and consumers lose confidence, manufacturing is first to feel the contraction. To date, one half of the jobs lost in the recession have been in manufacturing and construction, with most in manufacturing. Right now, the manufacturing capacity utilization rate is 65 percent, which means 35 percent of our capacity is idle. Until our factories are working full throttle again, the economy will continue to struggle.

Of course, when the economy comes out of recession, employment is the last thing to turn around. The unemployment rate is still climbing, albeit at a slower rate, and will likely top 10 percent by mid-2010. We don’t expect to start seeing meaningful improvement in employment until 2011. And consumers without jobs are unlikely to return to the marketplace. (See the NAM’s 2009 Labor Day report.)

In the long term, between now and 2014, we expect to see up to a million manufacturing jobs return, but that will depend at least in part on decisions made in Washington that will have tremendous impact on our ability to grow our economy and put people back to work.

Regrettably, our government today is focused not on making manufacturing more competitive and encouraging growth, but rather on priorities that - so far at least - seem likely to increase the cost of production. As currently being discussed, reforms to our health care system and climate change legislation would greatly increase the cost burdens of manufacturers who already shoulder a 17 percent disadvantage compared to our major trading partners.

Our greatest opportunities for growth lie beyond our borders. A full 95 percent of the world’s consumers are not in the U.S. To grow and prosper, we need a much larger commitment to increasing exports. Yet our government cannot bring itself to enact the free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea that would greatly expand exports and create jobs.

We can all wish the G-20 attendees in Pittsburgh well. But in the final analysis, our economic future will not be determined in Brussels or Beijing, it will be determined in Washington. And so far, our leaders are not rising to the challenge.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Monday released a report assessing the impact of the U.S. free trade agreements that were negotiated and went into effect with Singapore, Chile, Jordan and Morocco, “International Trade: Four Free Trade Agreements GAO Reviewed Have Resulted in Commercial Benefits, but Challenges on Labor and Environment Remain.”

While varying in details, the FTAs have all eliminated import taxes, lowered obstacles to U.S. services such as banking, increased protection of U.S. intellectual property rights abroad, and strengthened rules to ensure government fairness and transparency. Overall merchandise trade between the United States and partner countries has substantially grown, with increases ranging from 42 percent to 259 percent. Services trade, foreign direct investment, and U.S. affiliate sales in the largest partners also rose.

The U.S. trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea will also eliminate import taxes, lower obstacles to U.S. services, increase protection for U.S. intellectual property rights abroad and strengthen rules to ensure government fairness and transparency. History, in the form of a GAO report, tells us those changes bring substantial economic benefits.

Oh, but challenges remain!

Challenges always remain. That’s their nature. Members of Congress who always point to remaining challenges do so to support continued inaction. And as the GAO study proves, inaction is bad for the United States. FTAs have accomplished what they were meant to accomplish: improved access for U.S. products, more exports and economic growth for the United States.

The United States is in a recession, free trade agreements stimulate economic growth and jobs, and yet Congress refuses to act on the Panama, Colombia and South Korea. Challenges remain, but here’s one that Congress can speedily overcome: Enact the agreements.

From the White House:

President Bush will welcome President Martin Torrijos of the Republic of Panama to the White House on September 17, 2008. Panama is an important friend and ally of the United States. The President looks forward to discussing a range of issues with President Torrijos, including our common commitment to the United States-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement, expanding free trade and strengthening democracy throughout the region, enhancing security cooperation, and strengthening cooperation in international fora. This visit, following President Torrijos’ visit last May, underscores the on-going deep friendship and cooperation between the United States and Panama.

Greetings from Panama, the other country that has a trade agreement pending with the United States. I will leave hand-wringing over trade to those in Geneva this week - because here it’s awfully hard to find anyone who doesn’t support the idea of free trade and, more specifically, the U.S.-Panama Free Trade Agreement.

Landing yesterday, the plane made a sweep over the Pacific, where I counted 17 container ships lined up on approach to the Canal. Lots of commerce, on its way from Asia to the East Coast and points further east. There was a similar queue on the Atlantic end of the Canal too. This is trade at its most fundemental, and few nations are better positioned to benefit than Panama. The United States and China are the two largest users of the canal.

Having lunch al fresco along the Canal approach, it was hard not to notice the constant procession of PanaMax ships in both directions. You can propose a time-out on trade in Washington, but it’s not going to make a whit of difference here. They’re expanding the Canal in one of the largest public works projects in the world. U.S. Companies stand to benefit greatly from this project - so passing the trade agreement and getting those tariffs removed will be a great thing for lots of manufacturers. More on the Canal tomorrow after our tour.

From nearly any vantage point, Panama City reminds you of Hong Kong, with scores of 50 and 60 story residential towers crowded together. It is a bit surprising to find such a concentration of tall buildings in a small country, but Panama continues to be a big draw for U.S. and European retirees, and is a critical logistics and services center for Latin America. It is predominently on on services economy, including call centers, banking, insurance, and lots and lots of shipping-related business.

Three million people live in this country, about half in Panama City. This is still a developing country, with poverty levels still above 30%. But unemployment is low - below 5%, and GDP is growing. Inflation, particularly food prices, is running about 8-10% this year, I was told this morning. A trade agreement will certainly lower food prices, as agriculture and food tariffs tend to be high.