TRADING UP:

A Pro-Trade Agenda for U.S. Jobs (Matthew J. Slaughter, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Business and Globalization, Edward Alden, Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, Thomas A. Daschle, Senior Policy Adviser, DLA Piper, Andrew H. Card, Acting Dean, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, September 17, 2011, Wall Street Journal)

If there is a single issue on which Republicans and Democrats in Washington should be able to agree, it is that expanded trade is vital for U.S. economic growth and job creation. Exports accounted for more than a third of U.S. economic growth in 2010 and have helped keep the economy out of recession in 2011.

Over the past five years, growth in the big developing economies like India, China and Brazil has been eight times faster than in the advanced economies. America's economic future depends on it becoming a more successful trading nation, selling U.S.-made goods and services into the world's fastest-growing markets.

Yet the United States--the country that fathered the modern world trading system--today has no real trade policy.

Follow @brothersjudd