Forthcoming TPP Sales Pitch So Predictable, We Decided to Predict It

In the coming days, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) will release its annual report on the Obama administration’s trade policy agenda.  We know that you can’t wait to see what it will say. 

Good news.  You don’t have to.  Below we present the world’s first look at the report’s contents. 

How do we know in advance what the annual trade report will say?  No, we don’t have a mole at USTR (though if any of our USTR readers would like to volunteer…). 

We have a pretty good idea of the report’s contents, given that these reports tend to recycle the same old sales pitches that the administration has been disseminating ad nauseam (figuratively and, sometimes, literally). 

Since the status quo trade platitudes have become predictable, we thought we might as well predict them. 

So, you heard it here first – below are some of the administration's standard TPP-related talking points likely to be rehashed in USTR’s forthcoming report, followed by an explanation of why they do not bear repeating:

95 percent of the world’s consumers live outside our borders.

[But our trade pacts have not helped us reach them.]

Yes, this statistic shows a basic understanding of geography and population.  But it shows little else.  The official government trade data reveal that past trade deals have not been successful in helping U.S. firms reach consumers who live abroad.  In fact, U.S. goods exports to our “free trade” agreement (FTA) partners have grown 20 percent slower than U.S. exports to the rest of the world over the last decade.

The TPP would grant U.S. firms greater access to the world's fastest-growing region.

[But the relevant TPP countries have been growing one-fourth as fast as that region.]

The United States already has FTAs with six of the 11 TPP negotiating partners.  The combined GDP of the other five countries (the ones that could offer “greater access”) has been growing at a paltry 1 percent annually over the last decade – one fourth of the growth rate of the Asia-Pacific region overall.  Yes, the region has been growing quickly.  That just happens not to be relevant to the TPP. 

Exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages.

[But jobs displaced by imports pay even higher.]

What this talking point fails to mention is that jobs lost to imports under unfair trade deals tend to pay even higher wages than jobs in exporting industries, according to new data unveiled by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).  If a manufacturing worker making $1,020 per week loses her job to imports under a raw trade deal and gets re-hired in an exporting firm where she gets paid less than $870 per week (the actual numbers from EPI’s analysis), it’s probably small consolation that she could be making even less in a non-traded sector like restaurants.  But that is the very argument – that exporting industries pay more than non-traded industries – that the administration has been using to push for the TPP’s expansion of the trade status quo.

Their pitch omits the fact that far more jobs have been lost in the higher-paying import-competing industries than have been gained in exporting sectors under existing trade deals, judging by the burgeoning U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners, which has grown 427 percent since the deals took effect. It also does not mention that most trade-displaced workers do not actually get rehired in exporting industries, but in non-traded sectors, spelling an even bigger pay cut than the example given above.

China wants to write the rules for commerce in Asia. Instead, we should write the rules.

[We didn’t write the TPP’s rules – multinational corporations did. The TPP would hurt our national interests while failing, like past FTAs, to affect China’s influence.]

Ah yes, the boogeyman tactic.  When the economic sales pitch for a controversial new FTA falters on the existing FTA record of lost jobs, lower wages and increased trade deficits, FTA proponents frequently resort to raising the specter that without the controversial pact, the influence of a foreign opponent will rise further.  But the notion that the establishment – or not – of any specific U.S. trade agreement would affect China’s rising influence is contradicted by the record.  Proponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and NAFTA expansion pacts similarly warned that those deals were necessary to prevent rising foreign influence in Latin America.  But in the first 20 years of NAFTA, the share of Mexico’s imported goods coming from China increased from 1 to 16 percent, while the U.S. share dropped from 69 percent to 49 percent.  And from 2000 to 2011, a period in which U.S. FTAs with eight Latin American countries took effect, the share of Latin America’s imported goods coming from China increased from 1 percent to 7 percent, while the U.S. share fell from 25 percent to 16 percent.  Why should we believe the recycled pitch that another FTA would keep China’s economic influence in check?  

And the attempt to paint the TPP as a battle between “our rules” and China’s rules is absurd.  “We” did not write these rules.  The draft TPP text was crafted in a closed-door process that granted privileged access to more than 500 official U.S. trade advisors, nine out of ten of them explicitly representing corporations.  It is little surprise then that leaked TPP terms include new monopoly patent rights for pharmaceutical companies that would increase healthcare costs, limits on efforts to reregulate Wall Street, a deregulation of U.S. gas exports that could increase domestic energy prices, maximalist copyright terms that could thwart innovation and restrict Internet freedom, and new investor protections that incentivize offshoring.  Good luck selling that as advancing U.S. interests. 

The TPP is a 21^st-century agreement with strong labor and environmental standards.

[Government reports show that those standards have proven ineffective.]

The vaunted inclusion in the TPP of labor and environmental provisions that were hatched in a May 10, 2007 deal is nothing new. These provisions have been included in existing FTAs, but have proven ineffective. The George W. Bush administration, for example, included "May 10" terms in the FTA with Colombia, where anti-union violence and repression remain rampant. Indeed, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in November 2014 found broad labor rights violations across five surveyed FTA partner countries, regardless of whether or not the FTA included the “May 10” labor provisions. As for environmental standards, the TPP would empower foreign corporations (e.g. oil/gas companies) to demand taxpayer compensation before extrajudicial tribunals for new environmental protections in TPP countries (e.g. rejection of a proposed controversial pipeline). 

And despite recent claims to the contrary, the evidence shows no correlation between an FTA’s inclusion of the “May 10” standards and its trade balance impact. Though the Korea FTA, the U.S. template for the TPP, included the “May 10” standards, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown more than 70 percent in the three years since the deal’s passage. According to the administration’s trade-jobs ratio, that equates to the loss of more than 70,000 U.S. jobs – the same number of jobs that the administration promised would be gained under the deal. 

98 percent of U.S. exporters are small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

[The few small businesses that export have endured slow and falling exports under FTAs.]

Only 3 percent of U.S. SMEs export any good to any country. In contrast, 38 percent of large U.S. firms are exporters. Even if FTAs actually succeeded in boosting exports, which government data show they do not, exporting is primarily the domain of large corporations, not small businesses.

The relatively few small businesses that do actually export have endured even more disappointing export performance under FTAs than large firms have experienced.  U.S. small businesses have watched their exports to Korea decline even more sharply than large firms under the Korea FTA (a 14 percent vs. 3 percent decrease).  And small firms’ exports to Mexico and Canada under NAFTA have grown less than half as much as large firms’ exports. Indeed, small firms’ exports to all non-NAFTA countries has exceeded by more than 50 percent the growth of their exports to NAFTA partners.

Exports Lag 20%, Trade Deficits Surge 427% under "Free Trade" Deals

A recent parade of reports from corporate lobbies and think tanks has played a familiar but discordant refrain, alleging that more of the same "free trade" agreements (FTAs) would boost U.S. exports and reduce the U.S. trade deficits that displace U.S. jobs.  It sounds nice.  But this tired promise is simply not supported by the data.  

According to the official government trade data from the U.S. International Trade Commission, the aggregate U.S. goods trade deficit with FTA partners is more than five times as high as before the deals went into effect, while the aggregate trade 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.

Why do we keep hearing arguments that more of the same will produce different results?  Well, if you (or your corporate backers) wanted to Fast Track through Congress the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would expand the status quo FTA model, you might also find it convenient to parrot the standard FTA sales pitch of higher exports and lower trade deficits.  In doing so, you would need to ignore these facts:

• Growth of U.S. goods exports to FTA partners has been 20% lower than U.S. export growth to the rest of the world over the last decade (annual average growth of 5.3 percent to non-FTA nations vs. 4.3 percent to FTA nations from 2004 to 2014). 

• The aggregate U.S. goods trade deficit with FTA partners has increased by about $144 billion, or 427 percent, since the FTAs were implemented. In contrast, the aggregate trade deficit with all non-FTA countries has decreased by about $95 billion, or 11 percent, since 2006 (the median entry date of existing FTAs). See the chart below. Using the Obama administration’s net exports-to-jobs ratio, the FTA trade deficit surge implies the loss of about 780,000 U.S. jobs.

• The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) contributed the most to the widening FTA deficit – under NAFTA, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada has ballooned and a U.S. trade surplus with Mexico has turned into a nearly $100 billion deficit.

• More recent deals have produced similar results. Since the 2011 passage of the Korea FTA, the U.S. template for the TPP, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has already surged 72 percent.

“Higher Standards” Have Failed to Alter FTA Legacy of Ballooning Trade Deficits

Some proponents of status quo trade have claimed that post-NAFTA FTAs have included higher standards and thus have yielded trade balance improvements. But the Korea FTA included the higher labor and environmental standards of the May 10, 2007 deal, and still the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown over 70 percent in the three years since the deal’s passage. Meanwhile, most post-NAFTA FTAs that have resulted in (small) trade balance improvements did not contain the “May 10” standards. The evidence shows no correlation between an FTA’s inclusion of “May 10” standards and its trade balance impact. Reducing the massive U.S. trade deficit will require a more fundamental rethink of the core status quo trade pact model extending from NAFTA through the Korea FTA, not more of the same.

Corporate FTA Boosters Omit Imports, 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 “foreign exports”: NAM has errantly claimed that the United States has a manufacturing surplus with FTA nations by counting foreign-made goods as “U.S. exports.” NAM’s data include “foreign exports” – goods made elsewhere that pass through the United States without alteration before being re-exported abroad. Foreign exports support zero U.S. production jobs and their inclusion distorts FTAs’ impacts on workers.
  

• 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 427 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 $260 billion, and Bahrain, where they do not reach $1 billion), despite accounting for such critical differences for non-FTA countries.

2014 Trade Data Deal Further Blows to the Push for Fast Track

2014 Trade Data Reveal Surging U.S. Trade Deficits Under Korea FTA and NAFTA, and a Dramatic Failure to Meet Obama’s Export-Doubling Goal

Today’s release of the corrected 2014 annual trade data from the U.S. International Trade Commission reveal that President Barack Obama’s goal of doubling exports has failed dramatically, with a growing trade deficit with Korea under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and a burgeoning non-fossil fuel trade deficit with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners. Even as overall U.S. exports increased slightly due to growing U.S. fuel exports, manufacturing exports stagnated, according to projections. The data show that continuing with more-of-the-same trade policies would kill more middle-class jobs, dampen wages and increase income inequality – outcomes contrary to Obama’s “middle-class economics” agenda. The abysmal trade data are likely to reinforce congressional opposition to Obama’s bid to expand the status quo trade model by Fast Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). 

• Obama’s Five-Year Export-Doubling Plan Failed, in Part Thanks to His 2011 Korea FTA: The context for Obama’s 2015 State of the Union ask for Fast Track for the TPP is the abysmal failure
  of his 2010 State of the Union trade initiative – a plan to double U.S. exports in five years. The 2014 data show U.S. goods exports over those five years have increased by just 36 percent, falling more than $660 billion short. U.S. goods exports grew by less than 1 percent in 2014 – the same average rate of the prior two years. (The first two years of stronger export growth represented recovery from the worldwide crash in trade flows after the global financial crisis.) At the paltry 2012-2014 annual export growth rate, which is a fraction of the 4 percent average annual export growth seen in the decade before the Obama administration, Obama’s export-doubling goal would not be reached until 2057 – 43 years behind schedule.

• U.S. Exports Declined Under the Korea FTA, While Imports and the U.S. Trade Deficit with Korea Soared: Today’s data release also reveals a 14 percent increase in the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea in 2014, marking the third consecutive year of substantial growth in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea since the 2011 passage of the Korea FTA, which U.S. negotiators used as the template for the TPP. The 2014 U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea topped $26 billion, a 72 percent increase over the trade deficit in 2011 before the FTA took effect. U.S. exports remain lower than the level before the FTA went into effect, as imports have increased 17 percent. Had U.S. exports to Korea continued to grow at the rate seen in the decade before the FTA’s implementation, exports would be about 18 percent, or $7 billion, higher in 2014 than they actually were. The resulting trade deficit increase represents more than 70,000 lost American jobs, according to the ratio the Obama administration used to project gains from the deal. Ironically, 70,000 is the number of jobs the Obama administration promised would be gained from the Korea FTA.

• Non-Fuel NAFTA Trade Deficit Grows: The 2014 trade data are also projected to show a more than 12 percent, or $10 billion, increase in the non-fossil fuel U.S. goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico. The overall U.S. goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners, which also increased in 2014, has ballooned $155 billion, or 565 percent, under 21 years of the pact, reaching $182 billion in 2014.

• Contrary to the Administration’s TPP Sales Pitch That More FTAs Would Boost U.S. Exports, U.S. Exports to FTA Partners Have Grown More Slowly Than U.S. Exports to the Rest of the World Over the Past Decade. Taking into account the data for 2014, average annual U.S. export growth to all non-FTA partners in the past 10 years outpaced that to FTA partners by 24 percent.

• The United States Has a Large Trade Deficit with FTA Partners: Overall, the aggregate U.S. trade deficit with all U.S. FTA partners topped $177 billion in 2014, marking a more than $143 billion, or 427 percent, increase in the aggregate U.S. FTA trade deficit since the pacts were implemented. In contrast, the aggregate deficit with all non-FTA countries has decreased by more than $95 billion, or 11 percent, since 2006 (the median entry date of existing FTAs). Despite this, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman testified to Congress last month that we have a trade surplus with the group of FTA nations.

Heads Up for Distorted Data…

Given that the record of lagging U.S. exports and surging trade deficits under U.S. FTAs jeopardizes Obama’s prospects for obtaining Fast Track, the administration may try to obscure the results with distorted data. The USTR has taken to lumping foreign-made products in with U.S.-produced exports, which artificially inflates U.S. export figures and deflates U.S. trade deficits with FTA partners.

“Foreign exports,” also known as “re-exports,” are goods made abroad, imported into the United States, and then re-exported without undergoing any alteration in the United States. Foreign exports support zero U.S. production jobs. Each month, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) reports trade data with foreign exports removed, providing the official government data on made-in-America exports. But the USTR likely will choose to use the uncorrected raw data, as it has in the past, that the U.S. Census Bureau released last Thursday, which counts foreign-made goods as U.S. exports. Our figures are based on the corrected data.

By using the distorted data, the USTR may errantly claim an aggregate trade surplus with all U.S. FTA partners, though the actual 2014 U.S. goods trade balance with FTA partners is a more than $177 billion trade deficit. By counting foreign exports as “U.S. exports,” the USTR can artificially eliminate more than two-thirds of this FTA deficit, shrinking it to less than $57 billion. The USTR may misleadingly claim an FTA trade surplus by then adding services trade surpluses with FTA partners, which pale in comparison to the massive FTA trade deficit in goods when properly counting only American-made exports.

The USTR also may repeat its bogus claim that the United States has a trade surplus with its NAFTA partners by errantly including foreign exports as “U.S. exports,” removing fossil fuels and adding services trade data. But even after removing fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) and adding services trade surpluses, the United States still had a projected NAFTA trade deficit of $50 billion in 2014. Indeed, the fossil fuels share of the NAFTA trade deficit declined in 2014, and U.S. exports of services to NAFTA partners fell, according to projections. The USTR can make its errant claim of a “NAFTA surplus” only by including foreign exports, which artificially reduces the NAFTA goods trade deficit to less than half of its actual size.

The USTR also may boast about an increase in U.S. exports to Korea in 2014, while ignoring the much larger increase in imports from Korea. While U.S. goods exports to Korea in 2014 increased by $2.3 billion, imports from Korea have risen by $5.6 billion, spelling a $3.3 billion increase in the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea in the third calendar year of the Korea FTA.

Moreover, U.S. exports to Korea have declined since the FTA went into effect and did not return to the pre-FTA level in 2014. Monthly imports from Korea repeatedly broke records in 2014, such as in October when imports from Korea topped $6.3 billion – the highest level on record.

Expect the administration to repeat the same data trick it employed last year with respect to U.S. auto sector exports to Korea. Exports to Korea of U.S.-produced Fords, Chryslers and General Motors vehicles increased by fewer than 3,100 vehicles per year in the first two years of the Korea FTA. But given that exports of “Detroit 3” vehicles before the FTA were also tiny – fewer than 8,200 vehicles per year – the USTR expressed the small increase as a significant percentage gain in a press release. The USTR did not mention that more than 184,000 additional Korean-produced Hyundais and Kias were imported and sold in the United States in each of the Korea FTA’s first two years, in comparison to the two years before the FTA, when Hyundai and Kia imports already topped 1 million vehicles per year.

If Pinocchio Were Trying to Sell a Controversial Trade Deal

Four Pinocchios.  That’s the rating, reserved only for the biggest whoppers, that The Washington Post has given to the Obama administration’s most recent assertion of truthiness about the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - that the deal could boost income and “support 650,000 new jobs” in the U.S. 

How far off was the administration’s claim that the deal could create 650,000 jobs?  By about 650,000 jobs. 

As Glenn Kessler, Washington Post fact-checker, explained, “the correct number is zero (in the long run), not 650,000, according to the very study used to calculate this number.”

That’s right – the study itself, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, did not produce an estimate of job growth from the TPP.  Indeed, the study used an assumption of full employment, under which projected job gains would be precisely zero. 

The Peterson Institute has been hesitant to project employment impacts of controversial trade pacts since inaccurately predicting that NAFTA would create jobs, on the basis that the U.S. trade surplus with Mexico would rise.  Just two years into NAFTA, the $3 billion trade surplus with Mexico turned into a $26 billion trade deficit.  At that point, one of the study’s authors told The Wall Street Journal, “the lesson for me is to stay away from job forecasting.”

The Obama administration has yet to learn that lesson, apparently.  But how did the administration get a jobs number from a study that did not produce one?  (If this sounds familiar, the Chamber of Commerce pulled this same trick last year.)

The administration took the study’s projection that the TPP might yield a 0.4% increase in aggregate income in 2025 and used a back-of-the-envelope calculation to determine how many jobs could be created if that income went to new jobs instead. But then they claimed that the TPP not only could create these jobs, but simultaneously could create the income gains that they had just exhausted to produce their jobs prediction. 

In short, they double-counted, taking the Peterson Institute’s projection for the TPP’s economic impact and multiplying by two.

It’s hard to blame them – the study’s projection for the deal’s economic impact amounts to less than 40 cents per person per day in 2025 (at present value).  If you were selling the TPP, you’d want to double that too.  (Not that “less than 80 cents per day” is a great motto for a deal likely to make medicines more expensive, offshore jobs, and undermine health, environmental and financial protections.) 

But, you may say, let’s set aside the administration’s fast-and-loose numbers – don’t the Peterson Institute results still mean income gains from the TPP, however meager?  

That depends – do you make more than $88,330 per year?  If not, you’d be more likely to see income losses from the deal - not gains. 

The Peterson study made no attempt to determine the impact that the TPP would have on inequality, despite an academic consensus that trade flows under such deals have exacerbated U.S. income inequality.  So, in a study in 2013, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) took the projected TPP gains from the Peterson Institute study and added an analysis of how the TPP would affect income inequality.  Taking the Peterson Institute's income projections as given, CEPR used the empirical evidence on the trade-inequality relationship to show that even with the most conservative estimate of trade's contribution to inequality (that trade is responsible for just 10 percent of the recent rise in inequality), the losses from projected TPP-produced inequality would wipe out the tiny projected gains for the median U.S. worker.  

If one assumes the still-conservative estimate that recent trade flows have been responsible for 15 percent of the rise in inequality, then CEPR calculates that the TPP would mean wage losses for all but the richest 10 percent of U.S. workers.  So if you're making less than $88,330 per year (the current 90th percentile wage), the TPP would mean a pay cut.  

And that’s probably still too kind to the TPP, given that it requires accepting the array of outsized assumptions that the Peterson Institute used to produce its small income gain projection.  Nearly half of the study’s projected income gains come from what the study presumes will be a surge in foreign investment resulting from the TPP. But a raft of studies has produced, at best, contradictory evidence as to whether or not TPP-like investment protections included in past trade and investment agreements have actually had any impact on foreign investment.  Indeed, the most recent studies have concluded that such terms have failed to boost foreign investment.  If the Peterson study reflected this reality, the projected aggregate income gain (which would only reach the pockets of the wealthiest) would be halved.

The study also assumes that the workers who the TPP would displace would be able to rapidly find new jobs and that these new jobs would be just as high-paying as the old jobs, meaning no negative impact on consumer demand.  This runs counter to U.S. government data.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, three out of every five displaced workers in the manufacturing sector (where we could expect significant TPP-induced displacement) were forced to take a lower paying job upon being rehired last year.  For one third, the pay cut was more than 20%.  Why should we assume that the same losses would not befall TPP-displaced manufacturing workers?   

The Peterson study itself projects that during the final years of TPP implementation, about 100,000 U.S. workers would be displaced each year, and that’s only counting those who take jobs in entirely new sectors.  It’s unreasonable to assume that job replacements for all these workers would be immediate, that pay cuts would be nonexistent, and that there would be zero resulting impact on demand.  Back in reality, the hit to consumer demand would depress further the tiny aggregate income gain projected from the deal, spelling even tinier gains for the richest and even steeper income losses for the rest of us. 

So yes, the administration’s claim of 650,000 jobs from the TPP definitely deserves its four Pinocchios.  Or, to borrow a card from the administration, let’s call it eight.