PUT SOME BILL CLINTON IN THE CLOTHES:

Obama's Trade Trouble: The only way to make America competitive is to adopt policies that are anathema to congressional Democrats. (Irwin M. Stelzer, March 13, 2010, Weekly Standard)

If the president is serious about using exports to spur growth he will have to do a lot more than set up inter-agency task forces and advisory committees. First, he will have to get Congress to approve several trade deals that are before it, and which promise new jobs, although not necessarily for trade union members. So the unions are saying “no,” and Democratic congressmen, with an election now only eight months away, need the unions to provide campaign funds and doorstep campaigners. Obama won’t find many free-trade advocates among his congressional allies.

Second, he will have to settle several trade disputes, especially one with Mexico, a market that absorbed $129 billion in U.S. exports last year. In response to trade union pressure, Congress cancelled a pilot program, developed under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), that allowed Mexican trucks to travel more freely into the U.S. In retaliation, Mexico imposed $2.4 billion in tariffs on a variety of U.S. goods, resulting in the loss of $2.6 billion in exports and 25,000 jobs, according to business groups that are urging the president to pressure congress to ignore the Teamsters’ union and again allow Mexican trucks freer cross-border access.

Then there is Brazil, which last year persuaded the World Trade Organization that U.S. government subsidies and loan guarantees to cotton growers violated WTO rules, a ruling that allows Brazil to impose $560 million in retaliatory tariffs on cotton goods, beauty products, appliances and autos. More important, Brazil is free to impose other penalties, most notably breaking patents in the media, pharmaceutical and other technology industries. Unless American negotiators can get this issue resolved, continued subsidies to a few inefficient American agribusinesses will in effect throw thousands of American workers into the ranks of the unemployed. Negotiations are ongoing, but the Brazilian authorities are in no mood to bow to U.S. wishes. Witness their recent refusal to accede to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plea to join the U.S. in imposing sanctions on Iran. It is one thing to be unable to persuade China to go along with us on an important foreign policy issue, quite another to be turned down by a middling power such as Brazil. [...]

Several countries note that Congress refuses to ratify trade agreements that have been sitting in its in-box for over a year, and that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk doubts that progress will be made on the Doha trade-opening round anytime soon, given congressional fears of unleashing a flood of job-destroying imports. Not exactly harbingers of a new era of free trade.