U.S. Trade Deficits Have Grown More Than 440% with FTA Countries, but Declined 16% with Non-FTA Countries

The aggregate U.S. goods trade deficit with Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners is more than five times as high as before the deals went into effect, while the aggregate deficit with non-FTA countries has actually fallen. The key differences are soaring imports into the United States from FTA partners and lower growth in U.S. exports to those nations than to non-FTA nations. Incredibly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website states, “For those worried about the U.S. trade deficit, trade agreements are clearly the solution – not the problem.” Their pitch ignores the import surges contributing to growing deficits and job loss, while their export “data” is inflated, using tricks described below.

The aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners has increased by more than $147 billion (inflation-adjusted) since the FTAs were implemented. In contrast, the aggregate deficit with all non-FTA countries has decreased by more than $130 billion since 2006 (the median entry date of existing FTAs). Two reasons: a sharp increase in imports from FTA partners and significantly lower export growth to FTA partners than to non-FTA nations over the last decade. Using the Obama administration’s net exports-to-jobs ratio, the FTA trade deficit surge implies the loss of about 800,000 U.S. jobs. Trade with Canada and Mexico (our first and third largest trade partners, respectively) contributed the most to the widening FTA deficit. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S. deficit with Canada ballooned and the small U.S. surplus with Mexico turned into a nearly $100 billion deficit. The trend persists under new FTAs – two years into the Korea FTA, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has jumped more than 51 percent. Reducing the massive trade deficit requires a new trade agreement model, not more of the same.

U.S. Export Growth Falters under FTAs

Growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 30 percent over the last decade. Between 2003 and 2013, U.S. goods exports to FTA partner countries grew by an annual average rate of only 4.9 percent. Goods exports to non-FTA partner countries, by contrast, grew by 6.3 percent per year on average. Since 2006, when the number of FTA partner countries nearly doubled with the implementation of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the FTA export growth “penalty” has only increased. Since then, average U.S. export growth to non-FTA partner countries has topped average export growth to FTA partners by 47 percent.

Corporate FTA Boosters Use Errant Methods to Claim Higher Exports under FTAs

Members of Congress will invariably be shown data by defenders of our status quo trade policy that appear to indicate that FTAs have generated an export boom. Indeed, to promote congressional support for new NAFTA-style FTAs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) have funded an entire body of research designed to create the appearance that the existing pacts have both boosted exports and reversed trade deficits with FTA partner countries. This work relies on several methodological tricks that fail basic standards of accuracy:

• Ignoring imports: U.S. Chamber of Commerce studies regularly omit mention of soaring imports under FTAs, instead focusing only on exports. But any study claiming to evaluate the net impact of trade deals must deal with both sides of the trade equation. In the same way that exports are associated with job opportunities, imports are associated with lost job opportunities when they outstrip exports, as dramatically seen under FTAs.

• Counting “re-exports:” NAM has misleadingly claimed that the United States has a manufacturing surplus with FTA nations by counting as U.S. exports goods that actually are made overseas – not by U.S. workers. NAM’s data include “re-exports” – goods made elsewhere that are shipped through the United States en route to a final destination. Determining FTAs’ impact on U.S. jobs requires counting only U.S.-made exports.

• Omitting major FTAs: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has repeatedly claimed that U.S. export growth is higher to FTA nations that to non-FTA nations by simply omitting FTAs that do not support their claim. One U.S. Chamber of Commerce study omitted all FTAs implemented before 2003 to estimate export growth. This excluded major FTAs like NAFTA that comprised more than 83 percent of all U.S. FTA exports. Given NAFTA’s leading role in the 443 percent aggregate FTA deficit surge, its omission vastly skews the findings.

• Failing to correct for inflation: U.S. Chamber of Commerce studies that have claimed high FTA export growth have not adjusted the data for inflation, thus errantly counting price increases as export gains.

• Comparing apples and oranges: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has claimed higher U.S. exports under FTAs by using two completely different methods to calculate the growth of U.S. exports to FTA partners (an unweighted average) versus non-FTA partners (a weighted average). This inconsistency creates the false impression of higher export growth to FTA partners by giving equal weight to FTA countries that are vastly different in importance to U.S. exports (e.g. Canada, where U.S. exports exceed $251 billion, and Bahrain, where they do not reach $1 billion), despite accounting for such critical differences for non-FTA countries.

Chart: U.S. Trade Deficit Rises by $147 Billion with FTA Partners, Falls by $131 Billion with Rest of the World

Administration Uses Data Omissions and Distortions to Try to Hide Dismal Korea FTA Realities

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) disseminated a press release yesterday riddled with false claims about the record of the U.S. “free trade” agreement (FTA) with Korea, which turns two years old this week. The release attempts to obscure the fact that two years after the pact went into effect, the actual outcomes are exactly the opposite of the “more exports, more jobs” that the administration promised: U.S. monthly goods exports to Korea are down 11 percent, imports from Korea have increased and the U.S. monthly trade deficit with Korea has swelled 47 percent.

To set the record straight, here are USTR’s claims, followed by the Korea FTA’s inconvenient realities according to the official U.S. government trade data provided by the U.S. International Trade Commission. For a detailed, data-driven review of the Korea FTA’s two-year record, click here for Public Citizen’s new report: “Korea FTA Outcomes on the Pact’s Second Anniversary.”

USTR Claim: “In the two years that this landmark agreement has been in effect…exports of U.S. manufactured goods to Korea have increased” … “Made-in-America manufactured goods still grew their sales in Korea by 3 percent”

Reality: U.S. monthly exports to Korea of manufactured goods have fallen 5 percent on average relative to the year before the deal took effect. The United States has lost an average of more than $150 million each month in manufactured exports to Korea under the FTA. Manufacturing sectors that provide critical shares of U.S. exports to Korea, such as machinery and computers/electronics, have experienced steep export declines under the FTA (11 percent and 12 percent respectively). In contrast, of the four critical manufacturing sectors that have seen increases in average monthly exports to Korea under the FTA, none has experienced an increase of greater than 2 percent.

USTR Claim: “Since the Korea agreement went into effect, U.S. exports to Korea are up for our manufactured goods, including autos” (Ambassador Froman) … “overall U.S. passenger vehicle exports to Korea increased 80 percent compared to 2011, and sales of “Detroit 3” vehicles are up 40 percent.”

Reality:  Exports to Korea of U.S.-produced Fords, Chryslers and Cadillacs increased by just 3,400 vehicles from 2011 to 2013.  But given that pre-FTA exports of “Detroit 3” vehicles was also tiny – 8,252 vehicles – USTR can express the small increase of 3,400 cars as a “40 percent” gain. Meanwhile, 125,000 more Korean-produced Hyundais and Kias were imported and sold in the United States in 2013 (after the FTA) than in 2011 (before the FTA), when Hyundai and Kia imports already topped 1.1 million vehicles. Overall, while U.S. average monthly automotive exports to Korea under the FTA have been $12 million higher than the pre-FTA monthly average, average monthly automotive imports from Korea have soared by $263 million under the deal – a 19 percent increase. The tiny gains in U.S. exports have been swamped by a surge in auto imports from Korea that the administration promised would not occur because of its additional FTA auto sector measure negotiated in 2011. In January 2014, monthly automotive imports from Korea topped $2 billion for the first time on record. The post-FTA flood of automotive imports has provoked a 19 percent increase in the average monthly U.S. auto trade deficit with Korea.

USTR Claim: “…U.S. exports of a wide range of agricultural products have seen significant gains.”…  “There were also dramatic increases in U.S. exports of key agricultural products that benefit from reduced tariffs under KORUS, including dairy, wine, beer, soybean oil, fruits and nuts, among many others.”

Reality: Average monthly exports of all U.S. agricultural products to Korea have fallen 41 percent under the FTA in comparison to the year before the deal – a decline of $125 million per month. USTR omits the overall U.S. agricultural export record in its release, apparently hoping to distract from the net decline in agricultural exports by cherry picking a few products that have seen export gains. Meanwhile, some of the agricultural sectors that the administration promised would be the biggest beneficiaries of the Korea FTA – such as the meat industry – have been among the largest losers. Compared with the exports that would have been achieved at the pre-FTA average monthly level, U.S. meat producers have lost a combined $442 million in poultry, pork and beef exports to Korea in the first 22 months of the FTA – a loss of more than $20 million in meat exports every month. Since the FTA, U.S. average monthly exports of poultry to Korea have fallen 39 percent below the pre-FTA monthly average. U.S. poultry exports to Korea have been lower than the pre-FTA monthly level in every single month since the FTA’s implementation. U.S. average monthly exports of pork to Korea since the FTA have fallen 34 percent below the pre-FTA monthly average, and U.S. average monthly exports of beef to Korea have fallen 6 percent below the pre-FTA monthly average.

USTR Claim: “…Koreans are buying more U.S. services than ever…”…  “Exports of services to Korea increased an estimated 18.5 percent between 2011 and 2013, to an estimated $19.4 billion.”

Reality: Growth in U.S. services exports to Korea has actually slowed under the FTA. While U.S. services exports to Korea increased at an average quarterly rate of 3.0 percent in the year before the FTA took effect, the average quarterly growth rate has fallen to 2.3 percent since the deal’s enactment – a 24 percent drop. The pre-FTA year used as a baseline was not an anomaly – taking into account the full 13 pre-FTA years for which data are available, the long-term average pre-FTA quarterly growth rate for U.S. services exports to Korea was 2.9 percent, 21 percent higher than the post-FTA rate.

USTR Claim: “While our trade balance has been affected by decreases in corn and fossil fuel exports, changes that are due to the U.S. drought in 2012 and change in Korea’s energy mix, both of which were unrelated to the agreement” (Ambassador Froman) 

Reality: Corn and fossil fuels do not account for most of the crash in U.S. exports to Korea since the FTA. After removing corn, average monthly U.S. agricultural exports to Korea still declined under the deal. And after removing all fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal), the overall post-FTA decrease in U.S. average monthly exports to Korea barely budges, shifting from an 11 percent downfall to a 10 percent downfall. Even if discounting both corn and fossil fuels, U.S. monthly exports to Korea still fell under the FTA, and the monthly trade deficit with Korea still ballooned. It is not surprising that the dismal FTA record remains without these products, given that of the 15 U.S. sectors that export the most to Korea, 11 of them have experienced export declines under the FTA. No product-specific anomalies can explain away what has been a broad-based downfall of U.S. exports to Korea since the pact went into effect. Those losses amount to an 11 percent decline in average monthly exports to Korea that, combined with a 4 percent increase in average monthly imports, have caused the average monthly U.S. trade deficit with Korea to swell 47 percent under the FTA. The total U.S. trade deficit with Korea under the FTA’s second year is projected to be $8.6 billion higher than in the year before the deal. Using the administration’s current export-to-job ratio, this drop in net U.S. exports to Korea in the FTA’s first two years represents the loss of more than 46,600 U.S. jobs.

USTR Claim: “Slow economic growth in Korea between 2012 and2013 dampened demand for imports”

Reality: Korea’s GDP growth rate for 2013 is estimated to be higher than in both 2012 and 2011. And in 2012 (the first year of the FTA), Korea’s gross national income grew 2.3 percent and final consumption expenditures grew 2.2 percent. Since enactment of the Korea FTA, Koreans have been purchasing more goods overall, while purchasing fewer U.S. goods.

USTR Claim: “KORUS has also improved Korea’s investment environment through strong provisions on intellectual property rights, services, and investment, supporting U.S. exports.”

Reality: The Korea FTA included extraordinary foreign investor privileges that incentivize the export of U.S. investment, not the export of U.S. products, thereby promoting the offshoring of U.S. jobs. The deal’s “investor-state” terms provide special benefits to firms that relocate abroad and eliminate many of the usual risks that make firms think twice about moving out of the United States. New incentives for U.S. firms to relocate to Korea under the pact include a guaranteed minimum standard of treatment in Korea and compensation for regulatory costs, including the right to obtain government compensation simply because a regulation is altered after a foreign investment is established. U.S. firms that offshore production to Korea are also empowered to skirt Korea’s domestic legal system and directly “sue” the government in World Bank and U.N. tribunals comprised of three private attorneys. Such extraordinary privileges have already incentivized widespread offshoring under existing U.S. FTAs.

On 2nd Anniversary of Korea FTA, U.S. Exports Down, Imports Up and Trade Deficit Balloons, Fueling Congressional TPP Skepticism

Export Decline Hits U.S. Farmers and Auto Workers Particularly Hard, Dismal Outcomes of Pact Used as TPP Template Will Bolster Opposition to Obama Bid for Fast Track Authority

Two years after the implementation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), government data reveal that the Obama administration’s promises that the pact would expand U.S. exports and create U.S. jobs are exactly opposite of the actual outcomes: a downfall in U.S. exports to Korea, rising imports and a surge in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea. Using the administration’s export-to-job ratio, the estimated drop in net U.S. exports to Korea in the FTA’s first two years represents the loss of more than 46,600 U.S. jobs.

The damaging Korea FTA record, detailed in a new Public Citizen report, undermines the administration’s attempt to use the same failed export growth promises to sell an already skeptical Congress on Fast Track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping deal for which the Korea FTA was the template.

Contrary to the administration’s promise that the Korea FTA would mean “more exports, more jobs”:

• U.S. goods exports to Korea have fallen below the pre-FTA average monthly level for 21 out of 22 months since the deal took effect.  See graph below.

• The United States has lost an average of $385 million each month in exports to Korea, given an 11 percent decline in the average monthly export level in comparison to the year before the deal.

• The United States lost an estimated, cumulative $9.2 billion in exports to Korea under the FTA’s first two years, compared with the exports that would have been achieved at the pre-FTA level.

• Average monthly exports of U.S. agricultural products to Korea have fallen 41 percent.

• The average monthly U.S. automotive trade deficit with Korea has grown 19 percent.

The U.S. exports downfall is particularly concerning given that Korea’s overall imports from all countries increased by 2 percent over the past two years (from 2011 to 2013).

The average monthly trade deficit with Korea has ballooned 47 percent in comparison to the year before the deal. As U.S. exports to Korea have declined under the FTA, average monthly imports from Korea have risen four percent. The total U.S. trade deficit with Korea under the FTA’s just-completed second year is projected to be $8.6 billion higher than in the year before the deal, assuming that trends during the FTA’s first 22 months continue for the remaining two months for which data is not yet available.

Meanwhile, U.S. services exports to Korea have slowed under the FTA. While U.S. services exports to Korea increased at an average quarterly rate of 3 percent in the year before the FTA took effect, the average quarterly growth rate has fallen to 2.3 percent since the deal’s enactment – a 24 percent drop.

“Most Americans won’t be surprised that another NAFTA-style deal is causing damage, but it’s stunning that the administration thinks the public and Congress won’t notice if it recycles the promises used to sell the Korea pact – now proven empty – to push a Trans-Pacific deal that is literally based on the Korea FTA text,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “The new evidence of the Korea FTA’s damaging record is certain to make it even more difficult for the Obama administration to get Congress to delegate its constitutional trade authority via Fast Track for the TPP.”

The decline in U.S. exports under the Korea FTA contributed to an overall zero percent growth in U.S. exports in 2013, rendering virtually impossible Obama’s stated goal to double exports by the end of 2014. At the export growth rate seen over the past two years, the export-doubling goal would not be reached until 2054. While the Korea pact is the only U.S. FTA that has led to an actual decline in U.S exports, the overall growth of U.S. exports to nations that are not FTA partners has exceeded combined U.S. export growth to U.S. FTA partners by 30 percent over the past decade.

“The data simply do not support the Obama administration’s tired pitch that more FTAs will bring more exports,” said Wallach. “Faced with falling exports and rising, job-displacing deficits under existing FTAs, the administration needs to find a new model, not to repackage an old one that patently failed.”

The Korea FTA has produced very few winners; since the FTA took effect, U.S. average monthly exports to Korea have fallen in 11 of the 15 sectors that export the most to Korea, relative to the year before the FTA (see graph below). And while losing sectors have faced relatively steep export declines (e.g. a 12 percent drop in computer and electronics exports, a 30 percent drop in mineral and ore exports), none of the winning sectors has experienced an average monthly export increase of greater than two percent. Ironically, many sectors that the administration promised would be the biggest beneficiaries of the Korea FTA have been some of the deal’s largest losers.

AGRICULTURE: While the administration argued for passage of the FTA in 2011 by claiming, “The U.S.-Korea trade agreement creates new opportunities for U.S. farmers, ranchers and food processors seeking to export to Korea’s 49 million consumers,” average monthly exports of U.S. agricultural products to Korea have fallen 41 percent under the FTA.

• U.S. average monthly poultry exports to Korea have fallen 39 percent.

• U.S. average monthly pork exports to Korea have fallen 34 percent.

• U.S. average monthly beef exports to Korea have fallen 6 percent.

Compared with the exports that would have been achieved at the pre-FTA average monthly level, U.S. meat producers have lost a combined $442 million in poultry, pork and beef exports to Korea in the first 22 months of the Korea deal – a loss of more than $20 million in meat exports every month.

AUTOS AND AUTO PARTS: The administration also promised the Korea FTA would bring “more job-creating export opportunities in a more open and fair Korean market for America’s auto companies and auto workers,” while a special safeguard would “ensure… that the American industry does not suffer from harmful surges in Korean auto imports due to this agreement.” The U.S. average monthly automotive exports to Korea under the FTA have been $12 million higher than the pre-FTA monthly average, but the average monthly automotive imports from Korea have soared by $263 million under the deal – a 19 percent increase. So while U.S. auto exports have risen very modestly under the FTA, those tiny gains have been swamped by a surge in auto imports from Korea that the administration promised would not occur under the FTA.

• In January 2014, monthly auto imports from Korea topped $2 billion for the first time on record.

• About 125,000 more Korean-produced Hyundais and Kias were imported and sold in the United States in 2013 (after the FTA) than in 2011 (before the FTA).

• Sales of U.S.-produced Fords, Chryslers and Cadillacs in Korea increased by just 3,400 vehicles.

The post-FTA flood of automotive imports has provoked a 19 percent increase in the average monthly U.S. auto trade deficit with Korea. The Obama administration has sought to distract from this dismal result by touting the percentage increase in U.S. auto sales to Korea. This allows the sale of a small number of cars beyond the small pre-FTA base of sales to appear to be a significant gain when in fact it is not.

Read the new Public Citizen report on the Korea FTA record.

The 2014 Trade Agenda: What Hole? Keep Digging.

The President’s 2014 Trade Policy Agenda, released today by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), violates the first law of holes: when you are in one, stop digging. Instead, it sticks to the first rule of PR, when the data is against you (e.g. when export growth under last year's trade agenda amounted to zero percent), distract. 

In the face of large U.S. trade deficits with Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners, the report declines to count imports and counts exports when convenient. It tries to camouflage the damaging track record of past deals (“forget about the hole”) to sell to the U.S. Congress and public yet another round of FTAs (“just keep digging”). 

The report states that the administration is “working with Congress” to gain Fast Track authority to enact two sweeping and controversial new FTAs – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). It neglects to mention that, having seen the hole created by past Fast Tracked FTAs, members of Congress have stated in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion that they have no interest in handing the administration another shovel labeled “Fast Track.”

Much of the 2014 agenda is a copy and paste of the 2013 agenda, reiterating USTR’s stock set of talking points, such as the tired, counterfactual promise that a more-of-the-same trade policy will boost exports. In 2013, this is how USTR put it: “The Obama Administration’s trade policy helps U.S. exporters gain access to billions of customers beyond our borders to support economic growth in the United States and in markets worldwide.” This year they invert the sentence: “We seek to…strengthen our economy by…negotiating high standard agreements that help U.S. exporters gain access to billions of customers beyond our borders.”

But repetition does not make the argument any truer. Under the array of FTAs that have served as a template for the Obama administration’s trade policy agenda, U.S. exports grew by a grand total of 0% last year. The year before that, they grew by 2%.  At the abysmal export growth rate seen in the last two years, we will not reach Obama’s stated goal to double 2009’s exports until 2054, 40 years behind schedule. (The authors of this year’s Trade Policy Agenda opt not to highlight the ill-fated goal.)  

Also omitted is the inconvenient fact that the overall growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 30 percent over the last decade.  

Even more glaring is the report's lack of any mention of how exports to Korea have fared under the Korea FTA, which has its second anniversary in less than two weeks, despite detailing export performance to other countries. Under the Korea FTA, which served as the administration’s opening offer for the TPP negotiations, U.S. goods exports to Korea have fallen below the average monthly level seen before the FTA for 20 out of 21 months. Rather than deal with this reality, the report tries to hide it.

The data simply do not support the oft-parroted pitch that more-of-the-same FTAs are the ticket to boosting exports. 

But data is not the report’s strong suit. In defending existing deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Korea FTA so as to advocate for expanding on their model via the TPP and TAFTA, the report simply ignores the deals' track records. For example, on manufacturing, the report states: “to support the growth of advanced manufacturing and associated high-quality jobs here at home, in 2014 the Obama Administration will continue to pursue trade policies aimed at keeping American manufacturers competitive with their global peers.”

But official government data show that our manufacturing trade deficits have increased dramatically under the very trade policies that the administration vows to “continue to pursue.” Last year, we had a $52.4 billion manufacturing trade deficit with our 20 FTA partners. In 1993, before NAFTA was implemented and before 18 of these 20 countries had an FTA with the United States, we had a $30.1 billion manufacturing trade surplus with these same trade partners.  In the intervening 20 years, during which the United States implemented FTAs with all of these countries, the U.S. manufacturing trade balance with these trade partners fell by $82.6 billion. According to the administration’s own figures, that amounts to a loss of more than 446,000 U.S. jobs in manufacturing alone.

When directly addressing NAFTA, the report chooses to ignore one half of the trade flow equation and focus only on exports. It fails to mention that imports from Mexico and Canada under NAFTA have swamped exports, causing the NAFTA trade deficit to soar 556 percent, reaching $177 billion last year.

And while the report claims that “the agricultural sector has been a bright spot for exports,” that has not been the case under recent FTAs. The average annual U.S. agricultural deficit with Mexico and Canada in NAFTA’s first two decades reached $975 million last year, almost three times the pre-NAFTA level. Over the last decade, U.S. food exports to Mexico and Canada actually fell slightly while U.S. food imports from Mexico and Canada more than doubled.

Food exports have fared even worse under the Korea FTA – in the first year of the deal, U.S. beef, pork, and poultry exports to Korea fell by 8 percent, 24 percent, and 41 percent respectively. 

While ignoring the sluggish exports and deep deficits occurring under existing FTAs (“what hole?”), the 2014 Trade Policy Agenda advocates for the TPP by claiming it would deliver where its predecessors have failed. The report states, “TPP will expand U.S. trade with dynamic economies throughout the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific region.” 

Even if one ignores the disappointing export legacy of the deals serving as the TPP’s template, this sales pitch comes across as hollow. The United States already has FTAs with six of the 11 TPP negotiating countries, for which increased market access is largely not up for negotiation. Of the remaining five TPP countries, Japan is the only major economy, and its growth rate last year was a tepid one percent – hardly the sought-after “dynamism.” The remaining four countries include Vietnam (with an annual per capita income of $1,550), Malaysia (with an annual per capita income of $9,820), New Zealand (with a population the size of metro D.C.), and Brunei (with a population the size of Huntsville, Alabama). Are these the markets on which the administration’s history-defying promise of TPP-led export growth hinge? 

Members of Congress aren’t buying it. Most House Democrats and a sizeable bloc of House Republicans have said no to Fast Tracking the TPP. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have also voiced their opposition. So has 62% of the U.S. voting public. Their message to the administration is simple: we’re in a hole. Stop asking for shovels. Find a ladder.