Trump Trade Deficit 6.5% Higher than Obama’s Last Year, Not Eliminated as Then-Candidate Trump Promised

Trump Trade Deficit Increases Even as Trade Flows Show COVID-19 Effect, Dropping 15% in First Six Months of 2020 Compared to Same Period in 2019

The U.S. trade deficit in the first half of President Donald Trump’s fourth year in office remains 6.5% higher than in the same period in President Barack Obama’s last year, despite a 15% overall fall-off in trade flows related to the global pandemic, new trade data released by the U.S. Census Bureau shows.

“Worldwide COVID-19 has reduced trade flows, so the fact that Trump’s trade deficit is larger than  the same period in the last year of the Obama administration shines a big fat spotlight on Trump’s failure to ‘eliminate’ the trade deficit, which he promised endlessly as a candidate in 2016,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

Even as trade flows overall dropped 15%, the U.S. trade deficit in the first six months of 2020 was only down 9% relative to the same period in 2019. This is in part because imports from Mexico have begun to rise significantly. 

The new U.S. Census Bureau trade data showed that:

• The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on commerce in general and trade in specific are evident in the six-month 2020 data: Comparing the trade flows in the first 6 months of 2019 to the same period in 2020, U.S. trade has decreased 15%.

• • Total U.S. goods and services exports in the first half of 2020 were $1,066 billion relative to $1,266 billion  in 2019. Imports in the first half of 2020 were $1,341 billion versus $1,563 billion  in 2019.

• The six-month 2020 trade deficit is 6.5% higher than the deficit for 2016, the year before Trump took office, even as the COVID-19 effect reduced the deficit 9% compared to the first six months of 2019. Comparing the first half of Obama’s last year in office (January to June 2016), the overall trade deficit increased 6.5% rising from $257 billion to $274 billion in inflation-adjusted terms. (The unadjusted figures provided in the government data base show a rise from $238 billion to $274 billion.)

• • The overall U.S. goods and service trade deficit with the world dropped 9% in first half of 2020 relative to the same period in 2019 from $301 billion to $274 billion in inflation-adjusted terms (The unadjusted figures provided in the government data base show a drop from $297 billion to $274 billion.)

• • The U.S. trade deficit in goods decreased 7.5% in inflation-adjusted terms from $446 billion in the first six months of 2019 to $412 billion in the same period of 2020. However, the trade deficit in goods during these months is still 3% higher than the one experienced in the same period of 2016, rising from $399 billion to $412 billion (inflation-adjusted dollars).

• The China deficit is down relative to Obama’s last year, but there is “trade diversion” effect of imports increasing from other countries. 

• • The trade deficit with China decreased 22% in inflation-adjusted terms going from $169 billion in the first half of 2019 to $132 billion in the first half of 2020. It is also smaller compared to 2016, when in inflation-adjusted dollars, it was $173 billion for January to June.

• • In inflation-adjusted dollars, the goods trade deficit with the rest of the world (excluding China) increased from $277 billion to $280 billion in the first half of 2020 relative to the same period in 2019.

• The deficit with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners is 11% higher in the first half of 2020 relative to the same period in Obama’s last year in office but down relative to 2019 even as Mexican exports to the U.S. began to expand significantly in June.

• • The NAFTA deficit in the first six months of 2020 was $97 billion, 11% higher than the same period in 2016 when it was equivalent to $88 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. (In nominal terms the goods trade deficit with NAFTA parties increased by 18%, or $15 billion.)

• • The goods trade deficit with NAFTA parties decreased by $19 billion in inflation adjusted terms compared to the same period in 2019, largely because of measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

• • Even as the COVID-19 pandemic narrowed the trade deficit with NAFTA parties during the first half of 2020 compared to 2019, the reduction was not as large as expected given the jump of Mexican exports in June. According to the data released by Mexico’s statistics authority Mexico’s statistics authority (the National Institute of Statistics and Geography), Mexican exports, of which more than 80% are destined to U.S. markets, grew 75.5% in June relative to May. This resulted in Mexico posting a six-month January to June surplus of $2.6 billion even as Mexican exports decreased overall 12.8% compared to June 2019, Mexican imports dropped almost 10% more in the same period (22.2%).

Trade Deficit in Trump’s Third Year Is 14% Higher Than When He Took Office, Not Quickly Eliminated as He Promised as a Candidate

Drop of $28 Billion in U.S. Goods and Services Deficit in 2019 Relative to 2018 Explained by $44 Billion Improvement in U.S. Energy Trade Balance

Contrary to candidate Donald Trump’s pledge he would quickly end the U.S. trade deficit, today’s release of annual 2019 trade data show the overall U.S. goods and services deficit in Trump’s third year in office is 14% ($77 billion) larger than the deficit in 2016, the last year of the Obama administration. (Figures are inflation-adjusted* In nominal terms, the overall 2019 goods and services deficit 22% ($109 billion) larger than in 2016.)

Given the trade deficit has increased during Trump’s presidency, today the administration is spotlighting the drop in the 2019 deficit relative to the deficit in 2018, but:

• A $36 billion decline in U.S. oil imports and an $8 billion increase in oil and gas exports – a $44 billion improvement in the U.S. energy trade balance relative to 2018 – entirely explains the overall $43 billion decline in the U.S. goods trade deficit between 2018 and 2019. The improvement in the energy trade balance also is considerably larger than the decline in the overall U.S. goods and service deficit of $27 billion or 4% – from $646 billion in 2018 to $619 billion in 2019. The energy trade balance shift is not a sustainable way to decrease the U.S.-world trade deficit and poses serious climate change threats.

• The 2019 non-energy goods trade deficit is up $1 billion relative to 2018 and up 17% ($122 billion) relative to the end of the Obama administration.

• The 2019 manufacturing trade deficit in Trump’s third year is up 14% ($130 billion) relative to 2016, the last year of the Obama administration. Because these are the inflation adjusted terms, so they represent the growth in the deficit in constant December 2019 dollars.

• The sizeable 2019 decline ($82 billion) in the goods trade deficit with China relative to 2018 was countered by a $39 billion increase in the goods trade deficit with the rest of the world. (The China goods deficit dropped from $432 billion in 2018 to $350 billion in 2019 while the rest of the world goods trade deficit increased from $469 billion in 2018 to $508 billion in 2019.) Economists note that such “trade diversion” is driven by imbalances in currency values: While tariffs on Chinese goods may promote a decline in Chinese imports to the United States, deficits with the rest of the world increase. This is likely to continue while the U.S. dollar remains unsustainably high in value, in part because countries such as China hold massive dollar reserves, while other countries’ currencies remain undervalued. Note: The U.S. goods trade deficit with China in 2018 was the largest ever recorded, at $432 billion, up from $396 billion in 2017. This compares to $373 billion in 2016, Obama’s last year.

“Donald Trump has not delivered on the trade promises so central to his 2016 victory in Midwest states: The U.S. trade deficit is up significantly during Trump’s presidency, U.S. job outsourcing has continued and the manufacturing sector’s four-year employment boom that started two years before he took office flatlined in 2019,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The U.S. goods trade deficit with North American Free Trade Agreement partners Mexico and Canada increased to $243 billion in 2019 – up 31% and $58 billion since the start of the Trump administration. As Trump stonewalled congressional Democrats for a year before reopening and rewriting the revised NAFTA that he signed in 2018 to remove giveaways to Big Pharma and strengthen anti-outsourcing terms, the deficit grew 10% ($23 billion) between 2018 and 2019.

*Data Note: Trade data is sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau. We present deficit figures adjusted for inflation to the base month of December 2019 and expressed the data in constant dollars so the figures represent actual changes in the trade balances. We also offer the “nominal” figure, which is the number you will see in the U.S. Census Bureau data for figures earlier than 2019. Some economists view the nominal data as more accurately reflecting the overvalued U.S. dollar. “Manufacturing” is defined by BEA’s scope for manufacturing trade flows.  

Key Findings of the ITC Report on the Revised NAFTA: Modest Projections Do Not Alter Pact’s Prospects in Congress

The April 18, 2019 release of the International Trade Commission (ITC) report on the revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) does nothing to alter the reality that the fate of NAFTA 2.0 relies largely on whether the administration engages with congressional Democrats and then with Canada and Mexico to improve the text signed last year. That Democrats, unions and others who have opposed past pacts seek improvements – rather than the deal’s demise – reveals that a path exists to build broad support. But absent removal of new monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms that lock in high drug prices and strengthened labor and environmental standards and enforcement, the deal is not likely to garner a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Indeed, all four of the trade deals Congress enacted in the past decade required changes to their texts after the pacts were signed in order to pass the House.

• The official government projections of very small gains spotlight how Donald Trump has oversold the revised NAFTA, which he promised would “support many hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” “send cash and jobs pouring into the United States” and eliminate the large U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA countries. The modest findings reinforce congressional Democrats’ views that absent more improvements, the revised deal won’t stop NAFTA’s ongoing damage.
• The ITC projects that after six years, the pact would add 175,800 jobs – about the number created by the economy in a slow month – and increase wages by 27/100 of one percent or an average of $2.58 per week. Almost 80 percent of projected job growth is for workers in the service sector without a college education, meaning many of these jobs are likely to be low-paid. Almost one million mainly U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost to the original NAFTA according to Trade Adjustment Assistant certifications, which undercount trade-related job loss.
• Only $1.8 billion in trade deficit reduction with NAFTA countries is projected over time, relative to a U.S. 2018 NAFTA goods deficit of $215 billion. Yet, based on past performance of ITC projections on trade pact deficits, the more likely outcome is a larger NAFTA deficit. Consider the ITC’s original assessment of NAFTA: Within 10 years, the goods trade deficit with Mexico had grown to almost 20 times the level the ITC had projected in its dimmest forecast.
• Overall, the ITC projected minuscule gains from NAFTA 2.0: one-time gains of 35/100 of one percent in real GDP, 12/100 of one percent in employment and 27/100 of one percent in wages. In contrast to past reports, the agency somewhat obfuscated the time period of the projected GDP gain of $68.2 billion. It assumes a six-year implementation period, so if gains are realized steadily over that period, it means annual growth gains of only 6/100 of one percent for six years. That is smaller than a rounding error on the $19 trillion U.S. economy. The sum total effect of NAFTA 2.0 would be a GDP on January 1, 2025 that would be attained on March 6, 2025 without the deal.
  • Most of these economic gains are derived from a highly dubious new research methodology, which assigns an invented positive economic value to terms that reduce “policy uncertainty” by freezing in place environmental, consumer protection, financial and other safeguards. If the ITC had not done this, the report would have projected a negative outcome. All $68.2 billion of the deal’s supposed economic gains arise from simulating the impact of removing trade barriers that do not exist. In other words, the gains are generated not through the removal of trade barriers directly, but through the elimination of the possibility of new future regulatory policies, which are deemed to be potential trade barriers. Absent this fabrication, the revised NAFTA would have been projected to lower the United States’ GDP by $22.6 billion and reduce the number of jobs by 53,900. The very notion that “reducing policy uncertainty” generates economic benefits is questionable. But in this study, these imagined gains also are not balanced against foreseeable downsides, such as financial instability, lower worker productivity from injury or illness, and the like. Perversely, given the focus on “uncertainty” the ITC choose to simply not analyze the impact of one prominent new feature of the deal - its review and sunset provision - that industry attacks as creating new uncertainties to North American trade.
  • Absent methodological monkey business, how could a NAFTA revision that involves no major trade barrier elimination be projected to create almost 90 percent of the GDP gains as it predicted for the original NAFTA even though the first deal substantially cut tariffs? The study also projects almost 50 percent more economic gains than the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), even though the revised NAFTA covers only two other countries with which the United States has had almost no tariffs and has been integrated with for 25 years under NAFTA, while the TPP included 11 nations and involved significant tariffs cuts with Japan, Malaysia and others.

 

ITC’s Projected Real GDP Gains (in 2017 dollars)
NAFTA	$77.9 billion
TPP	$42.7 billion
USMCA	$68.2 billion

 

• The report then feeds these fabricated gains from the reduction of “policy uncertainty” into the same old computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that for decades has produced rosy ITC projections that have been systematically contradicted by trade pacts’ actual outcomes. The CGE model simply assumes away the very results that have often occurred under past pacts: long-term job loss, trade deficit increases and currency devaluations. By design, the CGE model assumes that the overall U.S. economy remains at full employment, that income inequality and the U.S. global trade balance does not change, and currency values are locked. These assumptions have systematically resulted in ITC trade-pact projections being entirely unrelated to actual outcomes.
  • IMF economists recently calculated negligible U.S. economic growth gains from the revised NAFTA relying on the same economic model as the ITC, but without the additional assumptions of gains from regulatory freeze. They found the United States would experience a welfare loss of $794 million, while Canada enjoys a small gain of $734 million and Mexico a gain of $597 million. The IMF study also found a zero percent change in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP for the United States, a 0.02 percent change for Canada and a -0.01 percent change for Mexico.
  • The ITC’s past trade-pact projections have been so entirely wrong – in direction, not just in scale – that findings of minuscule gains from the revised NAFTA would not have obtained as much attention had Donald Trump not set such a high bar by overselling this as a new species of trade deal that would miraculously reverse NAFTA’s decades of damage.

 

NAFTA: U.S.-Mexico Trade
1993 - Baseline	ITC Projection	Actual
$1.6 billion goods surplus	$2.3 billion goods deficit	$83.7 billion goods deficit
China-WTO: U.S.-China Trade
1998 - Baseline	ITC Projection	Actual
$57 billion goods deficit	$60 billion goods deficit	$281 billion goods deficit
U.S.-Korea FTA: Trade
2011 - Baseline	ITC Projection	Actual
$19 billion goods deficit	$16 billion goods deficit	$22 billion goods deficit

 

• The ITC report projects that longer periods for patents and other intellectual property monopolies will deliver economic gains by reducing what the ITC describes as “trade costs,” while dismissing any economic losses (reduction in welfare) accruing from high medicine prices. The report explicitly admits that “originator [first-to-market] firms” will gain “from stronger IPR protections” while “follow-on or generic firms” will suffer “losses.” Not only do high medicine prices hit Americans directly, but extracting licensing payments from foreign consumers by imposing these rules on NAFTA partners can crowd out purchases of U.S. exports, entailing U.S. job loss.
• Interestingly, for the first time the ITC considered the impact of investor protections and the related roll back of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), concluding: “The Commission’s quantitative analysis also shows that the reduction in the scope of ISDS would have a small positive effect on the U.S. economy. In particular, U.S. domestic manufacturing and mining output is estimated to increase due to greater amount of capital available in the United States for investing in such industries because of reduced investment in Mexico.”
• The ITC just assumes labor terms will be enforced, even though lack of enforceability is a core critique: “The USMCA labor provisions are expected to promote higher wages and improved labor conditions in member markets if these provisions are enforced.” (emphasis added) After noting that significant variable, which is not ensured in the current text, the report proceeds to project a 17.2 percent increase in Mexican union wages and then to feed that finding into the broader model to project U.S. employment and other gains. There is no alternative simulation based on non-enforcement despite the upside scenario relying on a course of action that is desirable, but far from certain: Mexico passes and implements labor law reform to comply with the agreement and the pact’s labor provisions remain enforced, which leads to more independent unions, which leads to successful collective bargaining, which leads to the replacement of thousands of low-wage “protection” contracts, which ultimately leads to higher wages. Second, if that happens, the projected gain is from $1.50-$3 an hour Mexican manufacturing wages to $1.76-$3.51 an hour wages, an increase that is too small to either improve Mexican workers’ lives or counter the low-wage pull factor to outsource U.S. jobs.

• The ITC projects very small job gains in the auto sector from the deal’s tighter rules of origin and other auto-sector-specific terms, while the U.S. Trade Representative’s office projects more jobs in the auto parts supply chain based on data from car producers that remains confidential.
• The ITC ignores the environmental chapter of the agreement, even as the administration claims it is the strongest such chapter of any trade agreement.
• The ITC concludes the revised pact will have little benefit for the energy sector, contradicting industry claims. “Given the already very low most-favored-nation (MFN) tariffs for the parties, as well as the effects of recent reforms in Mexico’s energy sector, USMCA’s energy-related provisions are likely to have little impact on U.S. trade and production of energy-related products.”

Modest Projections in Today’s ITC Assessment of the Revised NAFTA Do Not Alter Its Prospects in Congress

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

Note: The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) today released a study on the potential economic impact of the revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that projects minuscule economic gains in real GDP of $68.2 billion, or 35/100 of one percent. The highest projected gains in wages, employment and output are all less than one-half of one percent – with most figures much lower. Undergirding a large share of those tiny gains is an assumption that locking in lengthy intellectual property monopolies and freezing environmental and consumer safeguards leads to economic gains and no downsides. The report projects that over time, the agreement would add 175,800 jobs, which is less than one-fifth of what the U.S. government has certified as lost to the original NAFTA.  Public Citizen will soon release a detailed summary of findings. [UPDATE: findings available here]

 “The minuscule projected gains in this long-awaited official government assessment contradict Donald Trump’s grandiose claims that it will lead to ‘cash and jobs pouring into the U.S.’ and reinforces congressional Democrats’ views that absent more improvements, the revised deal won’t stop NAFTA’s ongoing damage.

The ITC’s past trade-pact projections have been so entirely wrong — in direction, not just in scale — that today’s findings of minuscule gains would have limited effect on the debate had Trump not set such a high bar by overselling this as a new species of trade deal that would miraculously reverse NAFTA’s decades of damage.

This report does nothing to alter the reality that the prospects for a NAFTA 2.0 vote rely largely on whether the administration engages with congressional Democrats and then with Canada and Mexico to improve the text signed last year. That congressional Democrats, unions and others who have outright opposed past pacts seek improvements rather than the deal’s demise reveals there is a path to build broad support. But absent removal of new monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms that lock in high drug prices and strengthened labor and environmental standards and enforcement, the deal is not likely to garner a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Indeed, all four of the trade deals Congress enacted in the past decade required changes to their texts after the pacts were signed in order to pass the House.”

2018 Annual Trade Data Show Highest-Ever U.S. Deficit with China, Highest NAFTA Deficit in a Decade

Grim Trade Balance Data Spotlights Imperative for Trump to Not Cave on China Trade Talks and to Work with House Democrats to Improve NAFTA Deal

The 2018 annual trade data released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week show record-setting U.S. goods trade deficits of $879 billion with the world, $419 billion with China and $215 billion with NAFTA countries, capping two years of steadily rising trade deficits for the Trump administration that contrast with candidate Donald Trump’s promises to quickly reduce them.  The rate of growth in the trade deficit has increased during the Trump era, with the increase from 2017 to 2018 greater than the change from 2016 to 2017. (All figures below are adjusted for inflation to a base year of 2018. Figures represent trade balances expressed in constant dollars, so, for years prior to 2018, the numbers are different than the data unadjusted for inflation that is provided by Census.)

“More important than Trump failing on the trade-deficit-reduction benchmark for success he set on trade is that he focus on addressing the root causes by securing a China trade deal that’s not about short-term soy and gas sales but addresses structural issues fueling the deficit and by working with congressional Democrats to improve the NAFTA so it has a chance to pass,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. “The growth of the trade deficit is accelerating in part because of early enactment of government policies like Trump’s tax package that incentivized production and job outsourcing while the major trade reforms are just now coming to a head.”

The annual 2018 trade data show the highest-ever recorded U.S. trade deficit with China. The U.S. deficit with China has grown during both years of the Trump administration, spotlighting why many China trade and foreign policy experts are urging the president not to cave in and accept a quick and meaningless China trade deal that fails to secure fundamental reforms necessary to reduce the deficit.

The data also show additional imports from Mexico during the Trump administration, especially in the auto sector, driving up the trade deficit with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners to its highest level since 2008. The data bolster congressional Democrats’ calls for the revised NAFTA deal that Trump signed to be improved, including by ensuring swift and certain enforcement of strong labor and environmental standards to reduce the incentive to outsource jobs to Mexico.

The annual data is also available on our Trump trade deficit tracker. The following major trends were observed through 2018:

Major Trends From Census’ 2018 Trade Data Release

Source: U.S. Census Bureau. All figures adjusted for inflation. NAFTA trade balance excludes re-exports of imported goods.

 

• The U.S. trade deficit with China has set another all-time record. The goods trade deficit with China was the highest ever recorded – a 16 percent increase over 2016 – the last year of the Obama administration. The China goods trade deficit in 2018 was $419 billion, a 9 percent increase over a $384 billion deficit in 2017, which came after a 6 percent increase over $361 billion in 2016, President Barack Obama’s last year in office.
• The U.S. goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners is the highest in the decade since the financial crisis – a 20 percent increase over 2016 – with auto leading the growth. The U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners during 2018 increased 10 percent to $215 billion from $196 billion in 2017, which was an increase of 9 percent from $180 billion in 2016. The previous record NAFTA trade deficit came in 2007 before the effect of the 2008-09 financial crisis when it reached a record $235 billion before falling to $146 billion in 2009. Three-fifths of the $43 billion growth in Mexican imports to the United States since 2016 is accounted for by the automotive (HS 87) and machinery sectors (HS 84). This comes before GM’s closures of four plants and opening of a new Mexico plant.
• The overall U.S. goods trade deficit with the world is set to be the highest since the financial crisis – up 15 percent over 2016. The U.S. trade deficit with the world in 2018 increased 8 percent to $879 billion in 2018 from $814 billion in 2017, which was up 6 percent from $766 billion in 2016. The previous record annual deficit was prior to the 2008-09 financial crisis when it reached $1 trillion in 2006 before falling to $586 billion in 2009.

U.S. Trade Deficit is Worse Than It Looks

U.S. energy exports are masking deepening manufacturing deficits. In 2008, oil and gas made up a greater share of the U.S. trade deficit than all other products combined. Since then, the deficit in oil products has plummeted and now makes up only 5 percent of the deficit with the United States projected to be a net energy exporter next year. Meanwhile, the deficit in manufactured goods has expanded and the surplus in agricultural products has declined. But for the boom in domestic energy production and exports, the overall trade deficit would have been much worse.

The growth of the trade deficit is accelerating under Trump. The trade deficit is not just growing larger, but quickening its pace of growth under Trump. For the world deficit over the 11-month period, after a 6 percent bump between 2016 and 2017, the deficit increased 8 percent from 2017 to 2018. And, as the trade deficit is growing twice as fast as GDP, now almost reaching record pre-financial crisis levels as a share of GDP, it’s not simply the strong U.S. economy that is driving the trade deficit, contrary to what some experts claim. Rather, there are structural trade problems.

Breathless coverage this past year of the impact of Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybeans, the second-largest export to China (after aerospace equipment) betrays the depletion of the U.S. export base. Not only do we now import $4 worth of goods for every $1 we sell to China, but low-value-added commodities like soybeans, cotton, oil, gas, metal scrap, wood pulp and paper waste make up most of the top 15 U.S. export products to China. In fact, the latest data available from 2017 on this measure show that 43 percent of our exports to China are low-value-added products, while only 6 percent of imports from China are in low-value-added categories. If more high-value-added products are produced offshore, our structural trade deficit will persist.

NOTE: We provide comparison data for cumulative deficits for 2018 relative to past years because this offers a clearer picture of trade trends than changes in month-to-month numbers. Monthly trade figures are volatile, and Census’ “seasonal adjustment” of it cannot control for unpredictable factors, such as exporters shifting shipment dates to avoid imposition of various countervailing tariffs. We focus on goods trade balances because services data by country lags the goods data and won’t be available until April 2019. The value of goods trade is also more than triple that of services trade, so has more impact on overall trends.

Third-Quarter Data Shows Record U.S. Trade Deficits During Trump Presidency

Contrary to Trump’s Campaign Pledges to Speedily Reduce the Deficit, Nine-Month Data Show Largest Deficit Ever Recorded With China and Largest With NAFTA Nations in a Decade

Government data released today reveals the highest U.S. goods trade deficit in a decade for the first three-quarters of 2018, contradicting President Donald Trump’s midterm campaign trail triumphalism on trade. During Trump’s presidency, the U.S. trade deficit with China has risen to the highest ever recorded, while the deficits with the world and with North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) nations have steadily grown, reaching nine-month levels in 2018 higher than any year since before the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

“Instead of the speedy reduction in the trade deficit that Trump promised as a focal point of his campaign, during his presidency, the U.S. trade deficit with the world, China and NAFTA countries has steadily grown,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “This alarming data spotlights that the Trump administration has chosen not to employ all of the tools at its disposal to bring down the trade deficit.”

Today’s U.S. Census Bureau release of the nine-month 2018 trade data reveals a global deficit and a China deficit that is higher than the nine-month level of Trump’s first year, which was higher than the nine months of President Barack Obama’s last year (all figures adjusted for inflation). The U.S. also is on track to end 2018 with the highest goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners since 2008. This is being driven by increasing imports from Canada and Mexico since 2016, but especially from Mexico this year.

As our Trump trade deficit tracker shows, the nine-month 2018 data indicate:

• The U.S. trade deficit with China sets another all-time record. The goods trade deficit with China over the first nine months of 2018 was the highest deficit ever recorded for the first three quarters of a year – a 13 percent increase over 2016. Comparing the first nine months of Trump’s first year to his second year, the China goods deficit increased 8 percent, from $280 billion in 2017 to $301 billion in 2018. This compares to $268 billion for the first three quarters of 2016, Obama’s last year in office.

• After increasing steadily during the Trump presidency, with a total increase of 23 percent over 2016, the U.S. goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners during the first three quarters of 2018 was the highest in a decade. The U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners during the first nine months of the year increased 11 percent, from $144 billion in 2017 to $160 billion in 2018 after falling to $130 billion in 2016, the last year of Obama’s term. The 2008 nine-month deficit, before the effect of the crisis was felt, reached a record $188 billion before falling to $101 billion in 2009 over the same nine-month period.

• The overall U.S. goods trade deficit with the world over the first nine months of 2018 was the highest in the decade since before the financial crisis and up 13 percent over 2016. The U.S. trade deficit with the world over the first nine months of 2018 increased 7 percent, from $599 billion in 2017 to $643 billion in 2018, up from $570 billion in 2016, the last year of Obama’s term. The 2008 nine-month deficit, before the effect of the financial crisis was felt, had reached a record $744 billion before falling to $420 billion over the same period in 2009.

The growth of the NAFTA trade deficit has been overshadowed by focus on U.S.-China trade conflicts. But it is notable that the growth of the U.S.-Mexico deficit is accelerating, with 11 percent growth from the first nine months of 2017 to the same period in 2018 compared to 6 percent growth over that period from 2016 to 2017. The U.S. deficit with Canada is still growing, but the rate has not accelerated.

This data likely will color the debate next year as a renegotiated NAFTA heads toward congressional consideration. Public Citizen’s analysis of the NAFTA 2.0 text revealed some improvements progressives have long demanded, damaging terms long opposed and important unfinished business. The analysis showed that fixing NAFTA’s trade-deficit-raising terms that incentivize U.S. firms to outsource jobs to Mexico to pay workers poverty wages, dump toxins and bring their products back here for sale remains a work-in-progress.

The latest trade data spotlights actions the Trump administration has chosen not to take to bring down the U.S. trade deficit.

The data arrives on the heels of Trump’s Treasury Department failing to label any country a currency manipulator. An analysis released recently by Public Citizen shows how the Treasury Department’s decision to rely on reporting criteria created by the previous administration has ensured no action on the issue, despite then-candidate Trump pledging to crack down on countries that gain trade advantages by distorting currency values.

As well, Trump has not exercised the authority he has to reverse waivers of “Buy America” procurement policies that outsource U.S. tax revenues to purchase imports for government use. He also has not followed through on his campaign pledges to penalize imports from firms that consistently outsource jobs or limit government contracts to firms that outsource jobs.

When Third-Quarter Data Is Released Friday, U.S. Trade Deficit Likely to Show A Continued Climb Under Trump

Deficit for Nine Months of 2018 Likely to Be Largest Ever Recorded With China and Largest With NAFTA in a Decade as Imports from Mexico Grow

The United States is on track to post a record high goods trade deficit for the first three quarters of 2018, contradicting President Donald Trump’s midterm campaign trail triumphalism on trade.

Instead of the speedy reduction in the trade deficit that Trump promised as a focal point of his presidential campaign, during his presidency, the U.S. trade deficit with the world, China and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) nations has steadily grown. The data underscores that the Trump administration has chosen not to employ all of the tools at its disposal to bring down the trade deficit.

When the U.S. Census Bureau releases nine-month data Friday, the global and China deficits are likely to be higher than the nine-month level of Trump’s first year, which was higher than the nine months of President Barack Obama’s last year. The U.S. also is on track to end 2018 with the highest goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners since 2008. This is being driven by increasing imports from both Canada and Mexico since 2016, but especially from Mexico this year.

This note provides comparison data for the cumulative third-quarter 2018 deficit relative to past years. This offers a clearer picture of overall trade flow trends than changes in month-to-month numbers. Monthly trade figures are volatile, and the “seasonal adjustment” of the monthly data done by the Census Bureau does not control for key factors, such as U.S. exporters trying to speed up shipments to avoid imposition of various countervailing tariffs. We focus on goods balances because services data by country lags the goods data by months. (The relevant services data will not be available until December 2018.) All figures are adjusted for inflation, so they represent changes in trade balances expressed in constant dollars.

When Friday’s data is released, we will post updated nine-month cumulative data, which also will be available on our Trump trade deficit tracker. But year-to-date trends through the first three quarters of 2018 likely will be in line with the following major trends observed through the first eight months of the year:

• The U.S. trade deficit with China is on pace to set another all-time record. The goods trade deficit with China over the first eight months of 2018 was the highest first eight months ever recorded – a 12 percent increase over 2016. Comparing the first eight months of Trump’s first year in office to his second year, the China goods trade deficit increased 7 percent from $245 billion in 2017 to $261 billion in 2018. This compares to $234 billion for the first eight months of 2016, Obama’s last year in office.

• After increasing steadily during the Trump presidency, with a total increase of 24 percent over 2016, the U.S. goods trade deficit with NAFTA partners during the first eight months of 2018 was the highest in the decade since the financial crisis. The U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners during the first eight months of 2018 increased 10 percent from $129 billion in 2017 to $142 billion in 2018 after falling to $115 billion in 2016, the last year of Obama’s term. The 2008 eight-month deficit, before the effect of the crisis was felt, reached a record $167 billion before falling to $88 billion in 2009 over the same period.

• The overall U.S. goods trade deficit with the world over the first eight months of 2018 was the highest in the decade since the financial crisis and up 13 percent over 2016. The U.S. trade deficit with the world over the first eight months of 2018 increased 7 percent from $532 billion in 2017 to $570 billion in 2018, up from $506 billion in 2016, the last year of Obama’s term. The 2008 eight-month deficit, before the effect of the financial crisis was felt, reached a record $658 billion before falling to $362 billion over the same period in 2009.

The growth of the NAFTA trade deficit has been overshadowed by focus on U.S.-China trade conflicts. But it is notable that the growth of the U.S.-Mexico deficit is accelerating, with 10 percent growth from the first eight months of 2017 relative to the same period in 2018 compared to 7 percent growth over that period from 2016 to 2017. The U.S. deficit with Canada is still growing, but the rate has not accelerated. 

This data is likely to color the debate next year as a renegotiated NAFTA heads toward congressional consideration. Public Citizen’s analysis of the NAFTA 2.0 text revealed some improvements progressives have long demanded, damaging terms long opposed and important unfinished business. The analysis showed that fixing NAFTA’s trade-deficit-raising terms that incentivize U.S. firms to outsource jobs to Mexico to pay workers poverty wages, dump toxins and bring their products back here for sale remains a work-in-progress.

The latest trade data spotlights actions the Trump administration has chosen not to take to bring down the U.S. trade deficit.

The data arrives on the heels of Trump’s Treasury Department failing to label any country a currency manipulator. An analysis released recently by Public Citizen shows how the Trump Treasury Department’s decision to rely on reporting criteria created by the previous administration has ensured no action on the issue, despite then-candidate Trump pledging to crack down on countries that gain trade advantages by distorting currency values.

As well, Trump has not exercised the authority he has to reverse waivers of “Buy America” procurement policies that outsource U.S. tax revenues to purchase imports for government use. He also has not followed through on his campaign pledges to penalize imports from firms that consistently outsource jobs or limit government contracts to firms that outsource jobs.

Will the U.S. Treasury’s Imminent Report to Congress on Trade Partners’ Currency Practices Once Again Fall Short of Its Mandate?

A Critical Tool to Address Currency Manipulation and Stem Record-Setting Trade Deficits Has Been Shirked by the Trump Administration, a New Public Citizen Analysis Shows

The Trump administration will release its latest report on trade partners’ currency practices imminently. Like its prior three iterations of this semi-annual report mandated by Congress to identify countries whose distortion of currency values to gain trade advantages must be addressed, it is unlikely any country will be listed. A new analysis by Public Citizen shows how the Trump Treasury Department’s decision to rely on reporting criteria created by the previous administration has ensured no action on the issue, despite then-candidate Donald Trump pledging to crack down on countries that gain trade advantages by distorting currency values.

Public Citizen’s analysis shows that the Treasury Department is not taking full advantage of the tools available to put countries on notice for damaging currency practices. The latest “Report to Congress on the Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States” is expected this week.

“One of Trump’s most emphatic campaign promises was to declare China a currency manipulator on Day One and crack down on any country misaligning its currency to cheat on trade, but Trump’s Treasury secretary has chosen to rely on criteria created by the previous administration that ensure no action is taken,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

Large U.S. structural trade deficits consistent with misaligned currencies have grown in recent years. Data released Friday by the U.S. Census Bureau show that the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with the world over the first eight months of 2018 is the highest in the decade since before the 2008-09 financial crisis.

After rising over the Trump administration’s first two years, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with NAFTA partners in 2018 is now also on pace to be the highest in a decade. The U.S. goods trade deficit with China over the first eight months of 2018 is the highest ever recorded.

Drawing in part from analysis by economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Council on Foreign Relations, Public Citizen recommends several changes to Treasury’s reporting regime to better align the review methodology with statutory obligations. This includes broadening the number of countries analyzed by eliminating self-imposed, arbitrary cutoffs on which countries are investigated, reviewing countries’ overall policy stances rather than immediate practices and reporting on countries’ efforts to improve transparency on foreign exchange interventions.

“While the NAFTA 2.0 deal sets an important precedent by being the first to include a currency provision in its main text, it provides no mechanism for actually disciplining countries that manage their currency values in a way that affects trade. The Treasury reporting process, on the other hand, is tied to a set of remedial actions and covers many more countries. The Trump administration must take full advantage of the authority Congress has provided to influence the foreign exchange practices of trading partners through the semi-annual reporting process,” Wallach said.

The full Public Citizen analysis is available here.

U.S. Trade Deficit for First Half of 2018 Likely to Be Largest Recorded in Years, With China Deficit on Track to Be Highest First-Half Ever Recorded

January-June 2018 Data Out This Friday Likely to Show a Trump Trade Deficit Higher Than First Halves of 2017 or 2016

Contrary to Donald Trump’s claim last week that he has reduced the trade deficit by $52 billion, the United States is on track to post a record high goods trade deficit for the first half of 2018. When the U.S. Census Bureau releases the six-month data this Friday, the global deficit and China deficit are likely to be higher than in the first half of Trump’s first year in office, which was higher than the first half of President Barack Obama’s last year. The six-month 2018 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deficit also is likely to be higher than the first half of Obama’s last year.

U.S. Trade Deficit with Selected Partners, Sum of First Five Months (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)

Trump’s $52 billion trade deficit reduction claim seems to be premised on a misleading comparison between an annualized change in the goods and services trade balance between the first quarter of 2018 (a $902 billion deficit) and the second quarter of 2018 (a $850 billion deficit.) But the U.S. goods trade deficit in the first quarter of 2018 was the largest first-quarter deficit since before the financial crisis, meaning a decline from that in the next quarter says very little about the overall trend. This comparison, like changes in month-to-month deficit figures that often are reported in the press, obscure actual trends. The monthly data are volatile, especially now, as U.S. exporters race to beat retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. Reviewing the same five-month goods trade balances shows that U.S. deficits with the world and with China were higher over the first five months of 2018 compared to the first five months of 2017, which in turn were higher than the first five months of 2016, even after adjusting for inflation.  (All figures in this memo are inflation-adjusted, so they represent the actual growth in the deficit expressed in constant dollars.)

What to Look for When Census Releases the Six-Month 2018 Trade Data on Friday

• The goods trade deficit with China over the first half of 2018 is on track to be the highest first-half ever recorded. Comparing the first five months of Trump’s first year in office to his second, the China goods trade deficit increased 8 percent from $141 billion in 2017 to $152 billion in 2018. This compares to $136 billion for the first five months of 2016, Obama’s last year. As was widely reported, U.S. exports were inflated during the first half of 2018 by shipments racing to get ahead of the imposition of tariffs, but imports also grew substantially.

• The goods trade deficit with the world over the first half of 2018 is likely to reach a level closer to the record deficits before the 2008-09 financial crisis. The U.S. trade deficit with the world over the first five months increased 5 percent from $320 billion in 2017 to $336 billion in 2018 after already hitting $296 billion in 2016, the last year of Obama’s term. The 2008 first five-month deficit, before the effect of the crisis was felt, reached a record $385 billion before falling to $206 billion in 2009 for the same period. 
  
  
• The six-month 2018 NAFTA goods trade deficit may also increase in Trump’s second year, as it did in his first relative to Obama’s last year in office. The NAFTA deficit for the first five months of 2018 increased from $70 billion in 2016 to $82 billion in 2017 to $84 billion in 2018. Because re-exports now represent 20 percent of U.S. goods exports to NAFTA nations, for the NAFTA figures we use domestic export data. This excludes goods not actually produced in the exporting country. In 2016, 44 percent or nearly $100 billion of U.S. re-exports went to NAFTA partners – $53.5 billion to Mexico and $45.7 billion to Canada. No other country received more than 6 percent of U.S. re-exports. Not removing re-export artificially inflate export

Why Month-to-Month Trends Miss the Main Story

Many trade watchers focus on the change in month-to-month numbers, especially now as they study whether newly imposed tariffs are altering trade flows. But monthly trade figures are volatile, and the “seasonal adjustment” done by Census does not control for factors such as U.S. exporters trying to beat the imposition of various countervailing tariffs. Thus, the main storyline when the May trade figures were released was that the monthly deficit with the world was the lowest since October 2016. But missing in this assessment was that U.S. trade deficits with the world and with China were higher during the first five months of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017, which were in turn higher than the first five months of 2016, even after adjusting for inflation. A more complete picture of U.S. trade balance trends is achieved by comparing the year-to-date totals through the same point of previous years. This removes the need for seasonal adjustment, given the data cover the same months each year. (We focus on goods balances rather than total goods and services in this memo because services data broken down by trading partner lags the goods data by months. The services data by partner for the first half of 2018 will not be available until September 2018.)

NAFTA Balances and the Skew from Re-Exports: Yes, We Have A Deficit With Canada

Accurately accounting for NAFTA trade balances is complicated. Since NAFTA went into effect, the share of U.S. exports to Mexico and Canada that are re-exports of goods made in other countries has jumped from 5 percent in 1993 pre-NAFTA to 20 percent in 2017. (Re-exports are goods imported, for instance, from China into the United States and then exported to Canada without change. In 2016, one-third of U.S. re-exports to Canada were produced in China.) Counting re-export of foreign-made goods in U.S. export data inaccurately inflate export numbers. But to get an accurate balance, the import side of the equation also must be considered. The United Nations’ trade database, called Comtrade, provides official government data on domestic exports (i.e., not including re-exports). Consider the controversial question of whether the United States has a trade deficit with Canada. The Comtrade data show $221 billion in U.S. domestic exports to Canada and $266 billion in Canadian domestic exports to the United States in 2016, the most recent year that can be compared to available services data. That yields a $45 billion U.S. goods trade deficit with Canada. After subtracting the $24 billion U.S. services trade surplus with Canada documented by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the United States still had a $21 billion goods and services trade deficit with Canada in 2016. When this issue came to the forefront earlier this year, analysts who did not subtract re-exports instead calculated a $7 billion U.S. surplus with Canada for 2016.

A Deeper Dig into the Data: About Those Soy Exports

Several deeper cuts of the data are worth considering. The first relates to what the United States is exporting, which to the world in 2017 was $138 billion of agricultural goods and $1.1 trillion of manufactured goods. There has been breathless coverage of how China’s retaliatory tariffs have impacted U.S. soybean exports, which are noted to be the second largest U.S. export to China after civilian aircraft, engines and parts. What this reveals is the lack of U.S. value-added exports to China after that nation’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). After soybeans, the top 15 U.S. export products to China include commodities like crude oil (No. 4), copper scrap ( No. 7), propane (No. 8), aluminum scrap (No. 11), wood pulp (No. 12), cotton (No. 14) and paper waste (No. 15). The giant trade deficit with China is the result of exporting only $120 billion worth of goods in total. However, a large portion are low value-added commodities. Of the top 15 U.S. export products to China, $24 billion represent such goods, and only $31 billion, or 56 percent, represent high value-added product categories like cars and electronics. Meanwhile, 84 percent of Chinese imports into the United States are in these high- value categories. The United States runs over a $100 billion deficit with China in electrical machinery alone.

The second deep dive relates to the impact on wages from the composition of the goods we import and export. One way to view this is by checking the subset of the data on our manufacturing trade balance. Even the most orthodox economists admit that trade changes the composition of jobs – and thus the wages – available for U.S. workers. As the grandfather of modern trade economics, Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson found in one of the last papers he published before his death, offshoring of higher-paid jobs to countries like China and India can cause U.S. workers to lose more in wages than they gain from access to cheaper imported goods. The downward pressure on wages is still the predominant feature of the U.S. labor market and trade is one of the significant factors fueling it and one of the only ones that can be altered via policy changes. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) revealed that when comparing the lower prices of cheaper imported goods to the income American workers lost from low-wage competition under current trade policy, by 2001 the trade-related wage losses were larger than gains from access to cheaper goods for the majority of U.S. workers. CEPR found that those without college degrees (58 percent of the workforce) had likely lost an amount equal to 12.2 percent of their wages under NAFTA-style trade, even after accounting for the benefits of cheaper imports. That meant a net loss of more than $3,965 per year for the average worker. Despite this, defenders of the trade status quo dismiss the relevance of trade deficits, especially given strong economic growth figures in an economy running near full employment. Yet, while headline economic indicators are strong, damage that is occurring may remain invisible. When the tide goes out on a hot economy, the damage in lower wages and the disappearance of middle-class jobs for the majority of Americans without college degrees may be seen and felt acutely, just as it was after the 2008-09 financial crisis.

New Trade Deficit Tracker

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch launches new Trade Deficit Tracker. Contrary to candidate Donald Trump’s pledge to speedily reduce the U.S. trade deficit, in Trump’s first year in office the goods trade deficit is larger than any time since 2008 and up 5 percent overall even in inflation-controlled terms from last year, with a significant jump in the China trade deficit and a 8 percent increase in the North American Free Trade Agreement deficit. Trump has not exercised his available executive authority to fulfill campaign pledges to limit imports, including those from firms that outsource jobs; label China a currency manipulator; revoke trade agreement waivers on “Buy America” procurement policies that outsource U.S. tax dollars to purchase imports for government use; or limit government contracts to firms that outsource jobs.

The overall 2017 U.S. goods trade deficit in inflation-controlled terms was $796 billion in 2017, up 5.4 percent or $40.9 billion from 2016, which was led by a U.S.-China goods deficit of $375 billion in 2017, up 5.5 percent and $19.5 billion from 2016. The 2017 U.S-NAFTA goods trade deficit was up 7.8 percent or $13.8 billion from 2016.

To document the significant increase in U.S. trade deficits under the Trump administration, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch has launched a new tracker. The tracker visualizes and tracks significant developments related to U.S. trade deficits with NAFTA partners (Canada and Mexico), and China respectively. Click here or on the image below to visit the tracker.

www.citizen.org/our-work/globalization-and-trade/trumps-trade-deficit

With Trade Commission TPP Review Due Next Week, New Study Shows Past Pacts’ Actual Outcomes Were Opposite of Agency’s Rosy Projections

Administration Expected to Tout Imminent USITC Study in New Push for TPP Passage Despite Agency’s Systematic Failure to Accurately Assess NAFTA, China and Korea Pacts

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The reliability or usefulness of an imminent government assessment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was called into question by a study released today that shows that past U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) projections of trade agreements’ benefits were systematically contradicted by the pacts’ actual outcomes.

The new study reviews USITC trade balance, job and economic sector projections in the statutorily required reports for the three most economically significant trade pacts prior to the TPP and finds the government study on each pact proved dramatically inaccurate – not only in degree, but in direction.

“Past government studies have systematically projected positive outcomes that were contradicted by the actual results, which is why members of Congress requested, without success, that the agency alter its approach to assessing the TPP,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The USITC predicted improved trade balances, gains for specific sectors and more benefits from the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and 2007 U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in reports on those pacts. The agency projected only a small deficit increase from China’s 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) entry deal and the granting to China of Permanent Normal Trade Relations status.

Instead, the U.S. trade deficits with the trade partners increased dramatically and, as detailed in the text of the new study, manufacturing industries from autos to steel and farm sectors such as beef that were projected to “win” saw major losses. A government program to help Americans who lose jobs to trade certified 845,000 NAFTA jobs losses alone and econometric studies concluded that millions of jobs were lost from the China deal, in contrast to gains projected by the USITC reports.

The new report also reviews how the USITC’s use of a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model leads to projections entirely unrelated to actual outcomes by simply assuming away the very results that have often occurred under past pacts: long-term job loss, trade deficit increases and currency devaluations.

Under the model, the USITC collects information on current exports, imports, gross domestic product (GDP), tariff rates, investment flows and more. It creates equations to calculate how trade flows would change if a pact’s terms were fully implemented. The model looks to an endpoint, not the process of getting there. It does not consider whether there may be increases in trade deficits along the way, or whether other nations may not fully implement or enforce a pact’s terms. Rather it projects a final outcome assuming full implementation. Running this simulation generates data on potential changes in exports and imports. By design, it assumes the trade balance does not change and that employment levels remain consistent – that workers who lose jobs simply obtain new jobs in other sectors where wages are presumed to increase.

A growing body of academic criticism of the CGE model employed by the USITC has focused on the numerous assumptions researchers make, including what economic factors are included and excluded, and what included factors are assumed to remain constant. For instance, implicit in the assumption that the trade balance does not change is the assumption of flexible exchange rates. But in reality, currency manipulation is a significant problem among some of the TPP countries. The U.S. Department of Treasury just recently included TPP nation Japan on its new Monitoring List in its semi-annual report on “Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States.”

The assumptions baked into the model can contribute to gaps between projections about import and export levels and actual outcomes. Also, given that the results of the trade flow simulations are then used to project broader outcomes (such as on U.S. economic growth), assumptions piled on assumption can cause results that are incorrect, not only in degree, but in direction.

Different assumptions can result in diametrically opposed outcomes, as demonstrated by the recent Peterson Institute for International Economics and Tufts University studies on the TPP. The Peterson Institute used a CGE model with assumptions similar to those employed by the USITC in past studies and found the TPP would result in a modest increase in U.S. GDP, but not impact overall U.S. employment. Using an economic model that allows for the possibility of less than full employment and rising income inequality, called the United Nations Global Policy Model, Tufts University economists concluded that the TPP would reduce U.S. growth rates and lead to 448,000 American jobs lost.

The Tufts findings spotlight just how drastically the assumptions baked into a model affect the outcomes; the Tufts economists actually employed the Peterson Institute trade flow simulation data. They plugged the Peterson findings on import and export levels at full TPP implementation derived from one set of unrealistic assumptions into a model that applies more realistic assumptions about how trade flow changes affect growth and employment – and got the opposite results on growth and jobs.

Finally, the output of any model also is greatly affected by the data put into it. Issues to watch for in this regard for the USITC’s TPP study include:

• How will the USITC TPP study treat “non-tariff barriers” (NTB)? What an international bank may consider an NTB may be what a policymaker or consumer considers an important safeguard to avoid costly financial crises. But recent trade pact projection studies have included guesstimates of gains resulting from the elimination of NTBs.

• Will the USITC TPP study consider how TPP investment rules could affect decisions about where to invest in production and whether the TPP will alter foreign direct investment trends?

• How will the USITC TPP study assess intellectual property provisions, given that longer monopolies may increase some U.S. firms’ profitability but also may cost governments and consumers more for medicines and access to information?

Under the Fast Track authority passed last year, the USITC is required to release a report projecting the economic effects of the TPP no later than May 18, 2016.

 

 

New Data Reveal That Obama’s Korea Trade Pact on Which the TPP Was Modeled Resulted in Doubling of Trade Deficit

Likely to Fuel Bipartisan Trade Revolt in Presidential and Congressional Campaigns as White House Gears up Push for Congressional Passage of TPP

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the Obama administration intensifies its efforts to persuade Congress to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), new U.S. government data released today reveal an “inconvenient truth” about the Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that served as the template for the TPP. The new data covering the first four years of the pact reveal that the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has more than doubled. This 115 percent deficit increase with Korea comes in the context of the overall U.S. trade deficit with the world decreasing slightly. 

The increase in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea equates to the loss of more than 106,000 American jobs in the first four years of the Korea FTA, counting both exports and imports, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the Obama administration used to promise job gains from the deal.

The Census Bureau data showing the outcomes of the Korea pact are the opposite of the Obama administration’s 2011 “more exports, more jobs” promises for the deal. The administration is now employing similar claims to try to sell the TPP to Congress and the American public as bipartisan opposition to more-of-the-same trade policies surges and presidential and congressional candidates spotlight the problems with the TPP and the failure of U.S. trade policies.

“President Obama has stepped up his efforts to do a hard sell on the TPP, but much of the TPP text was literally cut and pasted from the Korea agreement, so to see what a disaster the Korea deal has been is a stark warning,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “President Obama has repeatedly asked that the TPP not be judged against his predecessors’ failed trade deals, but now we can see the disastrous results from President Obama’s signature trade package, which helps to explain why in this election cycle Americans are on the warpath against our trade policies.” 

Despite the Korea FTA including more than 10,000 tariff cuts, 80 percent of which began on day one:

• The U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has increased 115 percent, or $16 billion, in the first four years of the Korea FTA (comparing the year before it took effect to the fourth year data).

• Since the FTA took effect, U.S. average monthly exports to Korea have fallen in 11 of the 15 U.S. sectors that export the most to Korea, relative to the year before the FTA. Exports of machinery and computer/electronic products, collectively comprising 28.6 percent of U.S. exports to Korea, have fallen 22.6 and 6.6 percent respectively under the FTA.

• The 115 percent surge in the U.S.-Korea goods trade deficit in the first four years of the FTA starkly contrasts with the 5 percent decrease in the global U.S. goods trade deficit during the same period.

• While U.S. goods imports from the world have decreased by 6 percent, U.S. goods imports from Korea have increased by 19 percent, or $11.5 billion, during the FTA’s first four years.

• U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 9 percent, or $4.4 billion, under the Korea FTA’s first four years.

• U.S. exports to Korea of agricultural goods have fallen 19 percent, or $1.4 billion, in the first four years of the Korea FTA despite the administration’s oft-touted point that almost two-thirds of U.S. agricultural exports by value would obtain immediate duty-free entry to Korea under the pact. U.S. agricultural imports from Korea, meanwhile, have grown 34 percent, or $123 million, under the FTA. As a result, the U.S. agricultural trade balance with Korea has declined 22 percent, or $1.5 billion, since the FTA’s implementation. The Obama administration promised that U.S. exports of meat would rise particularly swiftly, thanks to the deal’s tariff reductions on beef, pork and poultry. However, U.S. exports to Korea in each of the three meat sectors have fallen below the long-term growth trend since the Korea FTA took effect. Compared with the exports that would have been achieved at the pre-FTA average monthly level, U.S. meat producers have lost a combined $62.5 million in poultry, pork and beef exports to Korea in the first four years of the Korea deal – a loss of more than $5 million in meat exports every month. 
  • Despite the promises made by U.S. officials that the pact would enhance cooperation between the U.S. and Korean governments to resolve food safety and animal health issues that affect trade, South Korean banned nearly all imports of American poultry at the beginning of 2015 due to several bird flu outbreaks in Minnesota and Iowa. Comparing the FTA’s fourth year to the year before it went into effect, U.S. poultry producers have faced a 93 percent collapse of exports to Korea – a loss of nearly 100,000 metric tons of poultry exports to Korea. U.S. beef exports are finally nearing pre-FTA levels after declining an average of 11 percent during the first three years of the agreement. U.S. pork exports have also nearly recovered to pre-FTA levels after falling by an average of 16 percent in the first three years of the agreement

• Record-breaking U.S. trade deficits with Korea have become the new normal under the FTA – in 47 of the 48 months since the Korea FTA took effect, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly trade deficit in the four years before the deal.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has tried to obscure the bleak Korea FTA results, as congressional ire about the pact is fueling opposition to the TPP. The USTR’s standard data omissions and distortions include:

• The USTR tries to dismiss the decline in U.S. exports to Korea under the FTA as due to a weak economy in Korea. But the Korean economy has grown each year since the FTA passed, even as U.S. exports to Korea have shrunk. Korea’s gross domestic product in 2015 was 11 percent higher than in the year before the FTA took effect, suggesting that U.S. exports to Korea should have expanded, with or without the FTA, as a simple product of Korea’s economic growth. Instead, U.S. exports to Korea have fallen 9 percent in the first four years of the FTA.

• The USTR selects a few products that have gained exports to emphasize, while omitting the low value of such exports and the net trade deficit increase of 115 percent.

 

Talking Points: Response to 3/15/16 Peterson Institute Pro-TPP Paper

Below is a briefing note called, “Assuming Away Unemployment and Trade Deficits from the TPP” from the team at Tufts University that debunked the original Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) TPP study which this latest missive, “Adjustment & Income Distribution Impacts of the TPP” by PIIE’s Robert Lawrence and Tyler Moran, is premised. The key points are:

• Of course Lawrence and Moran find that TPP’s benefits far exceed the adjustment costs: They use the findings of the PIEE TPP study (Petri-Plummer) derived from a model that does not allow for permanent job loss or increased trade deficits and assumes no increased income inequality. Those assumptions, which contradict the outcomes of each past major U.S. trade pact, mean TPP wage and employment losses are just temporary “adjustment costs” on the way back to full employment. If that were not sufficient to distort the new study’s findings, the authors also pile on more outlandish assumptions to minimize the number of workers likely to be affected and the impact on their wages.

• With larger trade deficits and permanent job loss excluded by assumption, Lawrence and Moran then start discounting how many Americans would be hit even by temporary job displacement from the TPP by presenting three scenarios. 
  • They start with 1.69 million U.S. workers possibly displaced over ten years of the TPP.
  • They drastically reduce that total to 278,000 (mainly in manufacturing), by invoking another layer of assumption based on the underlying full-employment assumption: Rising demand will generate new jobs and thus limit job loss.
  • Then they reduce that to 238,000 workers by excluding workers who voluntarily leave manufacturing jobs, so the TPP can’t be blamed for those losses.

• They then apply a formula to estimate the temporary adjustment costs (essentially lost wages) from those “displaced.” They compare these to Petri and Plummer’s reported U.S. TPP gains of $131 billion. Recall that these gains are based on the outlandish assumptions baked into the model. Another study that allowed for job loss and increased trade deficits found the TPP would result in net losses for the United States.

• Lawrence and Moran’s resulting cost-benefit calculation does not report the costs, just the ratios, for the three scenarios. The authors report that for their “most realistic” scenario (#3), the one with the fewest displaced jobs, the benefits are 18 times the costs over the 10-year “adjustment period” (2017-26).
  • Then, they add in three “post-adjustment years” 2027-2030 and the ratio skyrockets to 115:1. Why? Presumably because with the full-employment assumption all displaced workers are, by then, happily employed in their new post-TPP jobs.

• Finally, the authors also make the unfounded assumption that U.S. wages will increase at the same rate as productivity, though that has not happened for thirty years. This assumption automatically raises most workers’ incomes in their analysis. They also claim the assumed income gains will be much the same for each quintile of U.S. income distribution, with the bottom quintile seeing an increase 0.007 of a percentage point higher than the top. Technically, that’s mildly progressive. But consider it in terms of absolute gains: The bottom 40 percent sees just $8 billion in income gains, while the top quintile would get $48 billion. (i.e., more in absolute terms than the bottom 80 percent combined.)

• The resulting cost-benefit calculations are misleading not only because the costs are assumed away, but also because the benefits are overstated. This latest paper takes the earlier Petri and Plummer estimates at face value, with all their flawed growth-boosting assumptions (such as a surge in foreign investment and most growth gains from non-trade measures). Plus, the gains are simply asserted to be large, when even the Petri-Plummer estimates of gains are incredibly small, just 0.5 percent of GDP for the United States in 2030, i.e., a paltry 0.029 percent per year on average over 15 years. How small is that? Even with all of the unrealistic assumptions, for the bottom 40 percent of U.S. income distribution, the gains amount to just $62 per person, in 15 years.

THE FULL BRIEFING NOTE FROM THE TUFTS TEAM CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://triplecrisis.com/assuming-away-unemployment-and-trade-deficits-from-the-tpp/

 

Debunking the Administration’s TPP = 18,000 Tax Cuts on U.S. Exports Talking Point

U.S. Sold Nothing in More than 10,600 of Those Categories...

Without compelling jobs or economic growth data to sell the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Obama administration is trying to shift focus to an impressive-sounding number with its mantra about TPP delivering “18,000 tax cuts for Made in America exports.”

But that is just the raw number of tariff lines cut by the five TPP nations with which the United States does not already have free trade agreements. The United States only sold goods to those nations in less than 7,500 of the 18,000 categories. Indeed, the United States exports no goods to any nation under some of the touted 18,000 tariff lines.

The 18,000 figure is a misdirect. The relevant question is not the number of tariff cuts other countries listed but whether the TPP would lead to net U.S. job creation, higher wages, an improved trade balance and higher U.S. growth rates.

• The United States exported nothing for more than half of the 18,000 categories to the five relevant nations – Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei – in 2014, the last year for which annual data is available. U.S. exporters already have “tax cuts” for their goods under previous trade deals with the other six TPP nations, including Canada and Mexico – our second and third largest trade partners.

• For the nearly 7,500 categories of goods out of the 18,000 for which we sold anything to the five nations without previous FTAs, almost 50 percent of the categories had sales under $500,000. And the TPP is not likely to transform that reality. Brunei (annual GDP $17.1 billion) is a tiny market. New Zealand (annual GDP $200 billion – smaller than San Diego) and Vietnam (annual GDP $186.2 billion – close to that of Denver) are not big markets. And, consumer demand is limited by Vietnam’s extremely low $2,052 per capita income. Malaysia’s per capital income is one fifth of that in the United States and its GDP is $338.1 billion, about the size of Atlanta. Japan is a huge market. But, with the exception of some agricultural goods, tariffs have not been the main barriers to U.S. exports to Japan. (GDP data from the World Bank)

• Almost 2,000 of the tariff reductions in the categories of products the United States does sell won’t be realized for over a decade. This includes some of those, such as beef and pork to Japan, where tariff cuts could make a difference. But because the TPP does not have enforceable disciplines against currency manipulation, by the time these cuts finally go into effect they could effectively have been erased if Japan devalues the yen.

• The administration’s “TPP Guide to 18,000 Tax Cuts” document bizarrely highlights goods TPP nations simply do not buy in volume from anyone. Consider the 34 percent “tax” cut by low-income Vietnam on Alaskan caviar. About $150,000 worth of caviar was imported by Vietnam from anywhere. Or Vietnam’s 5 percent tariff cut on skis. Vietnam only imported about $50,000 in skis in total.

• Many of the tax cuts the administration has touted include those that the administration claims the TPP’s weak environmental chapter would conserve. Among the 18,000 tax cuts are Malaysia’s shark fin tariffs, Vietnam’s whale meat tariffs and Japan’s ivory tariffs.

Indeed, the “tax cut” list is packed with gems. Christmas ornaments and pork for Muslim nations Malaysia and Brunei. Silkworm cocoons for Vietnam and Japan. Ski boots for Brunei. Camels for Vietnam.

Transitions at Eyes on Trade

This blog post is a farewell of sorts.  After three years, today is my last day at Public Citizen.  In a couple weeks, I’ll be continuing to push for a more just trade model over at Sierra Club’s climate and trade program as senior policy advisor. Eyes on Trade, of course, will still be here in the good hands of my colleagues at Global Trade Watch. 

It has been a treat to have this space to amplify the call of many for a new trade model, document the damage wrought by our existing trade deals abroad and at home, fact-check dubious economic projections and predictable spin jobs for pending trade deals, spotlight the threats those deals pose to our health/environment/economy/democracy, and witness the growth of the largest, most diverse coalition ever to oppose an expansion of the trade status quo.  

I started working on trade when I realized that three lawyers in an investor-state tribunal could trump basic tenets of democracy and rule against health and environmental protections for which many of us have fought.  When I saw how a particular model of trade has contributed to the growing gulf between the rich and the rest of us.  When I realized that multinational corporations could obtain special protections that restrict consumers' access to life-saving medicines and still get away with calling it "free trade."  

Of course, one need not work on trade to know about trade.  It is little wonder that majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike oppose the status quo trade pact model.  More than two decades of NAFTA, the WTO and NAFTA expansion pacts have contributed to surging U.S. trade deficits, widespread job loss, a flood of agricultural imports, downward pressure on middle-class wages and unprecedented levels of income inequality.  Behind the aggregate data lie shuttered factories, lost livelihoods and struggling communities.

These outcomes directly contradict the rosy promises made by corporate interests to sell these controversial deals to a skeptical U.S. Congress and public.  They also contradict President Obama’s stated economic agenda to revive U.S. manufacturing, boost middle-class wages and tackle inequality – an agenda that the TPP would undermine.  The Obama administration’s push for yet another NAFTA expansion deal casts a blind eye to the damaging legacy of the current trade model.

With opinion polls showing that the U.S. public is painfully aware of this legacy, the administration’s TPP push faces stiff opposition in the halls of Congress and the court of public opinion.  Turning a blind eye to the lived realities of the status quo trade model is unlikely to prove a winning strategy. 

And with that, at the risk of making this my shortest blog post to date (a perhaps not difficult feat), I bid you adieu.  It has been an honor to work with Public Citizen, and to work alongside many of you in pushing for a fair trade policy.  I look forward to continuing to do so from my new post. 

CAFTA’s Decade of Empty Promises Haunts the TPP

Ten years ago, after a flurry of backroom deal-making, Congress passed the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).  In the dead of night.  By a single vote.  

Exactly one decade later, today trade ministers are gathering in Hawaii to try to conclude deadline-missing negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a sweeping deal that would expand the CAFTA model of trade across the Pacific.

In attempt to quell the controversy surrounding the TPP, the administration is recycling the same lofty promises that were used to push for passage of CAFTA: the deal would safeguard public health, spur economic prosperity at home and abroad, and protect workers, consumers, and the environment.

After 10 years of CAFTA, the emptiness of such promises is on full display. Today in Central America, life-saving medicines are more expensive due to monopoly protections that CAFTA gave to pharmaceutical corporations – protections that are slated for expansion in the TPP.  And the headlines from several CAFTA countries do not report economic prosperity, but economic instability, drug violence and forced migration.  Meanwhile, CAFTA’s labor provisions have failed to halt the assassination of dozens of Central American union workers who were trying to end unmitigated labor abuses like wage theft.  In contrast, the pact’s foreign investor privileges, which the TPP would expand, have succeeded in empowering multinational corporations to challenge domestic laws, including consumer and environmental protections.

Worse than repeating the mistakes of the past, the TPP would repeat the mistakes of CAFTA’s present.

Making life-saving medicines unaffordable

During the debate over CAFTA, health experts warned that by handing pharmaceutical firms greater monopoly protections, the deal would restrict Central Americans’ access to more affordable generic versions of life-saving drugs.

Unfortunately, they were right.  Take, for example, Kaletra, a drug used to fight HIV/AIDS.  Under CAFTA rules, Kaletra has enjoyed monopoly protections in Guatemala, making generic versions unavailable, for the entire first decade of CAFTA.  Without a generic alternative, Guatemala’s public health system pays about $130 per bottle of Kaletra.  In contrast, the generic version of Kaletra costs less than $20 per bottle, according to the Pan American Health Organization reference price.  For Guatemala’s taxpayers, paying more than six times the generic price for Kaletra under CAFTA means less money to build schools or bridges.  For Guatemala’s HIV/AIDS patients, it can mean the difference between life and death.

Like CAFTA, the TPP is slated to include extreme monopoly protections for pharmaceutical corporations.  Indeed, the deal even omits limited provisions to protect access to affordable medicines that were included the most recent U.S. free trade agreements.  That’s why Doctors without Borders has described the TPP as not only worse than CAFTA in restricting access to medicines, but “the most damaging trade agreement ever for global health.” 

Turning a blind eye to labor abuses

One decade ago, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative sold CAFTA as the “best ever trade agreement on labor,” boasting “world class” labor provisions.  Those provisions failed to prevent the murder of 68 Guatemalan unionists over the course of seven years without a single arrest.  In 2008, the AFL-CIO and Guatemalan unions filed an official complaint under CAFTA’s labor provisions, calling for an end to the rampant anti-union violence, wage theft, and other abuses.  It was not until six years and dozens of unionist murders later that the U.S. government moved to arbitration on the case.  Today Guatemala’s union workers still endure frequent attacks with near-total impunity.

CAFTA’s labor provisions have proven similarly ineffective in the Dominican Republic, where sugar cane workers endure 12-hour workdays in hazardous conditions without receiving legally-required overtime pay.  A Spanish priest who filed an official CAFTA complaint in attempt to rectify the abuses was informed by U.S. Department of Labor officials, “Nothing is going to happen on account of not complying.”  Indeed, nothing has happened.  Despite CAFTA’s “world class” labor provisions, the Dominican Republic’s underpaid cane workers continue laboring in squalid conditions.

Why has CAFTA, like U.S. trade agreements before and since, failed to curb widespread labor abuses?   Kim Elliot, a member of the Department of Labor’s National Advisory Committee on Labor Provisions of U.S. Free Trade Agreements, recently offered this blunt explanation: the labor provisions of U.S. trade deals “are in there because they’re necessary to get deals through Congress.”  She added, “It’s really all about politics and not about how to raise labor standards in these countries.”

Now, in attempt to get the TPP through Congress, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is parroting the same promise it made for CAFTA, claiming that the deal would include “the highest-ever labor commitments.”  While the TPP’s labor provisions have been described as more “enforceable” than those in CAFTA, this is nothing new.  The last four U.S. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) already included such “enforceable” terms, but still failed to end on-the-ground offenses, according to a 2014 U.S. government report.  Colombia’s unionists have faced dozens of assassinations and hundreds of death threats despite the Colombia FTA’s inclusion of TPP-like labor provisions.  And last year Peru explicitly rolled back occupational health and safety protections for workers despite the Peru FTA’s “enforceable” labor provisions.  Neither country has faced penalties under the FTAs.  It’s unclear why the TPP’s replication of such unsuccessful labor provisions should be expected to curb the systematic labor abuses in TPP countries like Vietnam, which bans independent unions, uses forced labor, and, by the Vietnamese government’s own estimate, has more than 1.75 million child laborers.

Empowering corporate attacks on consumer and environmental protections

In contrast to CAFTA’s unenforceable “protections” for workers, the deal granted highly enforceable privileges to foreign corporations.  This includes empowering them to bypass domestic courts and challenge domestic consumer and environmental protections before extrajudicial tribunals via “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS).

Corporations have not held back in using this controversial parallel legal system to challenge pro-consumer policies, including government efforts to keep electricity affordable.  In 2010 a U.S. energy company with an indirect, minority stake in Guatemala’s electric utility used ISDS to challenge Guatemala’s decision to lower electricity rates for consumers.  The next day, the company sold off its minority share.  A three-person ISDS tribunal generously decided to treat the firm as a protected “investor” in Guatemala and ordered the government to pay the corporation more than $32 million.  In another energy-related CAFTA case, a U.S. financial firm challenged the Dominican Republic’s decision not to raise electricity rates amid a nationwide energy crisis.  The government decided to pay the firm to drop the case in a $26.5 million settlement, reasoning that it was cheaper than continuing to pay legal fees.

CAFTA countries also face an increasing array of ISDS cases against environmental protections.  A U.S. mining company, for example, has launched a claim against the Dominican Republic for delaying and then denying environmental approval for an aggregate materials mine that the government deemed a threat to nearby water sources.  Other U.S. investors in the Dominican Republic have threatened to launch a CAFTA claim against the government for denying environmental approval for their plans to expand a gated resort.

The TPP would dramatically expand the controversial ISDS system, newly empowering more than 28,000 additional foreign-owned firms to ask private tribunals to order taxpayer compensation for commonsense environmental and consumer protections.

Fueling economic instability

Ten years ago, CAFTA proponents promised the deal would bring economic prosperity to Central America, making it “the best immigration, anti-gang, and anti-drug policy at our disposal.”  Today, CAFTA countries Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are plagued by drug-related gang violence and forced migration.  While the causes are many, “economic stagnation” has fed the crisis, according to the U.S. State Department.  CAFTA clearly failed to deliver on its promise of economic growth for the region.

Worse still, CAFTA has contributed to the region’s economic instability.  Before the razor-thin passage of CAFTA, development organizations warned that the deal could lead to the displacement of the family farmers that constitute a significant portion of Central America’s workforce, by forcing them to directly compete with highly-subsidized U.S. agribusiness.  Indeed, agricultural imports from the United States in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have doubled since the deal went into effect, while the countries’ agricultural trade balance with the United States has dropped, spelling farmer displacement. 

And despite promises that CAFTA would make up for rural job loss by creating new jobs in apparel factories, apparel exports to the United States from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have actually fallen $1.6 billion, or 21 percent, since the year before CAFTA took effect.  Not only has the promise of new factories disappeared – so have existing factories.  

If the TPP were to take effect, the apparel jobs of Central America would be expected to decline even quicker, contributing to further economic instability.  That’s because the TPP includes Vietnam, a major apparel exporter where independent unions are banned and where the minimum wage averages less than 60 cents an hour – a fraction of the minimum wages in Central America (or even in China).  Central America is already losing the race to the bottom.  It will only fall further behind if the TPP makes Vietnam the newest low-wage competitor. 

The promise-defying track record of CAFTA need not be repeated.  When the TPP negotiators meeting today in a resort hotel in Hawaii finish this round of negotiations, we are likely to hear a familiar litany of promises about how the TPP would benefit consumers, workers, and the environment.  With those promises punctured by a decade of CAFTA’s stark realities, we have a unique opportunity to say “enough is enough.” 

Representative Who “Deeply Regrets” NAFTA Vote Warns Congress Not to Flip-Flop on Fast Track

Today the House of Representatives narrowly passed a procedural rule, inserted into an unrelated legislative package last night, that gives defenders of the unpopular status quo trade model six weeks to try to revive the Fast Track package that was put on life support last Friday. They will not succeed so long as they continue to face the wall of dogged, diverse grassroots pressure that delivered Friday’s landmark fair trade victory.  

Even so, the Obama administration and congressional proponents of more-of-the-same trade deals will try to badger the many members of Congress who voted down the Fast Track package into switching their votes. They will likely reiterate the tired litany of false promises that members of Congress and the U.S. public have heard time and again when being sold unpopular trade pacts.

In a poignant speech before today’s vote, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) warned against trusting such promises. In 1993, Rep. Hastings cast a controversial vote for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – the deal that spawned the status quo trade model that Fast Track would expand.  Today, Hastings stated:

In the 20 plus years that I’ve served in this body, I can think of only three votes which I deeply regret making and one of those was in support of NAFTA. In the years since, I’ve seen, after NAFTA, a decrease in American jobs, a rollback of critical environmental protections, here and in Mexico where I was promised that the environmental circumstances in the maquiladoras would be cleared up – and they were not – and a stagnation of wages that has prevented the financial upward mobility of working class and middle class Americans and has ground poor Americans into poverty beyond belief.

Rep. Hastings made clear that he has learned from NAFTA’s broken promises and urged his colleagues to stand firm by continuing to oppose Fast Track’s expansion of the trade status quo:

If we’re going to create trade policy that is worthy of future generations, then we must ensure that policy strengthens—not weakens—labor rights. It must strengthen—not weaken—environmental protections. It must ensure other countries responsibility to adhere to basic human rights. It must expand and strengthen our middle class, not squeeze hardworking Americans in favor of corporate interests. The legislation included in this rule today is part of a trade package that does nothing to bolster these important priorities.  

If past is precedent, the White House and congressional leadership will also try to make special deals with members of Congress who voted against the Fast Track package on Friday, offering promises of political cover or special goodies – from bridges to import safeguards – if they would be willing to face the wrath of their constituents and flip-flop on Fast Track.  But a review of the last two decades of trade-vote dealmaking reveals that such promises made to extract unpopular trade votes have also been consistently broken, leaving members of Congress exposed to voters’ anger over their decision to defy the opinion and interests of the majority.

Here again, Rep. Hastings’ experience offers a cautionary tale.  In deciding how to vote on NAFTA, Florida representatives like Hastings were concerned that the deal could lead to an influx of underpriced tomatoes from Mexico, displacing Florida’s tomato farmers and the state’s many tomato-related jobs. To extract their votes, the Clinton administration promised Florida representatives that the U.S. government would take measures to safeguard Florida tomato growers if NAFTA led to a surge in tomato imports.

The Clinton administration never fulfilled this promise. Before NAFTA, Florida had a $700 million tomato industry with 250 growers.  Within two years of NAFTA, tomato imports from Mexico soared, Florida’s tomato revenues dropped to $400 million and the state’s tomato industry shrank to just 100 growers.  No meaningful import safeguards were enacted by the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush administration or the Obama administration. Today, imports of tomatoes from Mexico are up 247 percent since NAFTA’s implementation.  Florida’s tomato growers have now filed a lawsuit to obtain the safeguards that they, and Florida’s representatives, were promised 22 years ago.

Rep. Hastings learned the hard way that promises used to extract “yes” votes on unpopular trade deals rarely materialize. His colleagues have the opportunity to learn the easy way – by heeding Rep. Hastings’ warning and maintaining opposition to Fast Track. 

New Polls Spotlight Damage of Past Trade Deals, Reveal Opposition to TPP Content

You may have seen the headlines about today’s Reuters/Ipsos poll and yesterday’s Pew poll, touted as showing public support for trade deals.  A close look at the polls  reveals that they did not even ask about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Fast Track, the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), or any other element of the controversial current trade policy agenda.

The polls did confirm, however, what polling has consistently shown: the U.S. public likes the general notion of trade but opposes the documented results of past trade deals and the actual content of pending ones.   

Today’s Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that a majority of the U.S. public “support[s] new trade deals to promote the sale of U.S. goods overseas.”  This is not surprising.  Who would be opposed to trade deals framed as simply boosting sales of U.S. goods?  (Never mind that exports of U.S. goods have actually grown slower, not faster, under existing U.S. trade deals.) 

The poll did not ask whether respondents “support new trade deals that could offshore U.S. manufacturing jobs.”  We do not need to rely on hypotheticals to guess how the U.S. public would respond to this question. Just three weeks ago, another Ipsos poll stated: “International trade agreements increase Americans’ access to foreign-made goods and products but at the risk of American jobs being lost. What would you say is more important...?” 

Eighty-four percent of the U.S. public said that “protecting American manufacturing jobs” is more important than “getting Americans access to more products.” Based on Ipsos' own polling, if today’s Reuters/Ipsos poll had presented not just the claimed upsides of trade deals, but the documented downsides, the results likely would have been quite different. 

The same Ipsos poll from earlier this month also asked, “If the Obama administration supports an international trade agreement that does not specifically prohibit currency manipulation, do you think the United States Congress should support or oppose that trade deal?” 

Seventy-three percent of the U.S. public said that Congress should oppose any trade agreement that does not prohibit currency manipulation.  The TPP, of course, fits that bill.  The Obama administration has repeatedly dismissed Congress' bipartisan, bicameral demand for the TPP to include binding disciplines against currency manipulation.  

Today’s Reuters/Ipsos poll did not address this fact about the TPP.  Indeed, it did not address the TPP at all.  Or Fast Track.  Or TAFTA.  Or anything other than the concept of “trade deals to promote the sale of U.S. goods overseas.”  According to Ipsos’ own polling results, had today’s poll mentioned the actual content of the TPP (e.g. the lack of binding currency manipulation disciplines), the result would have been broad opposition. 

Like the Reuters/Ipsos poll, yesterday’s Pew poll did not ask respondents specifically about the TPP, TAFTA, or Fast Track.  It did ask respondents about the impacts of free trade deals generally, which produced some damning, if paradoxical, results.  While the majority said they thought free trade agreements have been broadly good for the United States, the dominant opinion was also that free trade agreements have hurt the middle class and even the broader U.S. economy:

• 46% said that free trade agreements “lead to job losses,” while only 17% said they “create jobs”

• 46% said that free trade agreements “make the wages of American workers” lower, while only 11% said they make wages higher

• 34% said that free trade agreements actually “slow the economy down” and 25% said they do “not make a difference” for economic growth, while only 31% said they “make the economy grow”

• 30% said that free trade agreements actually “make the price of products sold in the U.S.” higher and 24% said they do not impact consumer prices, while only 36% said they lower prices

• Among those earning less than $30,000 a year, 44% said free trade agreements have hurt their financial situation and that of their family, while only 38% said they have helped their financial situation

• Among those who rated their personal financial situation as “poor,” 55% said free trade agreements have hurt their family’s finances, while only 27% said they have helped their family’s finances

Though Fast Track proponents will no doubt try, it's difficult to spin these results as a resounding endorsement of "free trade agreements" in general, much less the particularly expansive breed of "trade" agreement represented by the TPP and TAFTA.  If anything, the most recent polls show (once again) that the status quo trade model that Fast Track would expand has hurt the middle class. 

Seven Corporations that Could Sponsor Obama’s Controversial Trade Deal (If His Nike Endorsement Falls Flat)

President Obama apparently has a flair for irony. He selected the headquarters of offshoring pioneer Nike as the place to pitch the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal in a major speech on Friday. As Obama tries to sell a pact that many believe would lead to more U.S. job offshoring and lower wages, why would he honor a firm that has grown and profited not by creating U.S. jobs, but by producing in offshore sweatshops with rock bottom wages and terrible labor conditions?

Less than 1 percent of the 1 million workers who made the products that earned Nike $27.8 billion in revenue in 2014 were U.S. workers. Last year, one-third of Nike’s 13,922 U.S. production workers were cut. Most Nike goods, and all Nike shoes, are produced overseas, by more than 990,000 workers in low-wage countries whose abysmal conditions made Nike a global symbol of sweatshop abuses.

This includes more than 333,000 workers in Nike-supplying factories in TPP nation Vietnam, where the average minimum wage is less than 60 cents per hour and where workers have faced such abuses as supervisors gluing their hands together as a punishment. Instead of requiring Nike to pay its Vietnamese workers more or ending the abuse they endure, the TPP would allow Nike to make even higher profits by importing goods from low-wage Vietnam instead of hiring U.S. workers.

If using an offshoring pioneer to rally support for the beleaguered TPP does not succeed for some reason, here are seven other U.S. corporations that Obama might consider as equally fitting backup options: 

1.      Philip Morris

Sure, Philip Morris International – the world’s second-largest tobacco corporation – may not be the world’s most-loved corporation, but Obama would find an enthusiastic TPP corporate sponsor in the firm.  Philip Morris has explicitly lobbied for controversial TPP provisions that would empower multinational corporations to bypass domestic courts, go before extrajudicial tribunals of three private lawyers, and challenge domestic laws that millions of people rely on for a clean environment, a stable economy, and healthy communities. Indeed, Philip Morris is already using this parallel corporate legal system, known as “investor-state dispute settlement,” to attack landmark anti-smoking policies from Australia to Uruguay. The TPP would newly empower thousands of multinational corporations to launch “investor-state” attacks against countries’ health, environmental and financial protections. In one fell swoop, the deal would roughly double U.S. exposure to “investor-state” attacks against U.S. policies.

2.      Goldman Sachs  (and other Wall Street firms)

If Obama’s Nike promo falls flat, maybe he should turn to a Wall Street bank as the next TPP corporate cheerleader. It’s no surprise that Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs love the TPP.  The deal includes
binding rules, written before the financial crisis under the advisement of the banks themselves, that would require domestic policies to conform to the now-rejected model of deregulation that led to financial ruin. And for the first time, the TPP would empower some of the world’s largest 20 banks to directly challenge new U.S. financial protections before extrajudicial tribunals on the basis that the regulations frustrated the banks' "expectations."

3.      Pfizer  (and other Big Pharma corporations)

Pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer are likely candidates for further corporate TPP-peddling given that the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied for the TPP more than any other. Small wonder – the deal offers pharmaceutical corporations a buffet of handouts that would allow them to raise medicine prices while restricting consumers’ access to cheaper generic drugs. One TPP chapter would give pharmaceutical firms expanded monopoly protections that would curb access to essential medicines in TPP countries like Vietnam, where it is projected that 45,000 HIV patients would no longer be able to afford life-saving treatment. Another TPP chapter would establish new restrictions on government efforts to cut medicine costs for taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' health programs. A third TPP chapter would empower foreign pharmaceutical corporations to directly attack domestic patent and drug-pricing laws in extrajudicial tribunals.

4.      ExxonMobil  (and other fracking corporations)

Maybe Obama’s next TPP photo op should be in front of a natural gas fracking drill owned by TPP-supporting ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded natural gas corporation. Natural gas firms are hopeful about TPP provisions likely to spur a surge in natural gas exports. For the rest of us, that would mean an expansion of dirty fracking and an increase in electricity costs. Implementing the TPP would require the U.S. Department of Energy to automatically approve natural gas exports to TPP countries, waiving its prerogative to determine whether those exports, and the resulting incentive for more fracking, would be in the public interest. As states like New York ban fracking to protect against health and environmental dangers, the TPP would move in the opposite direction. Indeed, the TPP would open the door to more “investor-state” attacks on anti-fracking protections, like the one Lone Pine Resources has launched against a Canadian fracking moratorium that prevents the firm from fracking under the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

5.      Time Warner  (and other Hollywood corporations)

Hollywood corporations like Time Warner Inc. already have been partnering closely with the Obama administration in stumping for the TPP – recent leaks reveal that the Motion Picture Association of America literally has asked the administration to vet the corporate alliance’s pro-TPP statements. The corporations are pining for stringent TPP copyright protections that could threaten Internet freedom by pushing Internet service providers to police everyday content sharing, resulting in blocked or censored websites. Leaked proposals for the deal would even make the common, non-commercial sharing of copyrighted content (e.g. remixed songs, reposted video clips) a prosecutable crime. 

6.      Red Lobster  (and other corporations using imported fish and seafood)

U.S. chain restaurants and agribusinesses that profit from imports of fish and seafood, at the expense of U.S. independent fishers and shrimpers, could also serve as willing backers of Obama’s TPP pitch. The deal would likely reduce or eliminate U.S. tariffs on imports of more than 80 types of fish and seafood products, increasing further the already massive flow of fish and seafood imported into the United States. Even without the TPP, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only physically inspects less than 1 percent of imported fish and seafood for health risks, despite that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that imported fish are the number one cause of U.S. disease outbreaks from imported food. The TPP would exacerbate this public health threat by enabling more fish and seafood imports from major exporters like Malaysia and Vietnam, where widespread fish and seafood contamination has been documented. For example, the FDA has placed 193 Vietnamese fisheries on a “red list” due to risk of salmonella contamination.

7.      Chinese Corporations in Vietnam

If Obama is willing to use Nike to promote the controversial TPP despite its reliance on low-wage labor in Vietnam, maybe he’d be willing to also solicit TPP endorsements from the Chinese corporations that are setting up shop in Vietnam in hopes of using the TPP to undercut U.S. businesses. The Chinese and Vietnamese press report that many Chinese textile and apparel firms are now building factories in Vietnam in hopes of taking advantage of the TPP’s planned phase-out of U.S. tariffs on apparel imported from Vietnam. This not only would place U.S. textile producers in direct competition with Chinese-owned firms using low-wage labor in Vietnam, but also would eliminate the jobs of workers in Mexico and Central America who now make the clothes that were made in the United States before the North American Free Trade Agreement and Central America Free Trade Agreement. In addition, the TPP’s gutting of Buy American policies would newly empower Chinese firms operating in Vietnam to undercut U.S. businesses to get contracts for goods bought by the U.S. government, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. For all firms operating in TPP countries like Vietnam, the United States would agree to waive "Buy American" procurement policies that require most federal government procurement contracts to go to U.S. firms, offshoring U.S. tax dollars to create jobs abroad. 

Third Year of Korea FTA Data Released, Show Failure of Obama’s ‘More Exports, More Jobs’ Trade Pact Promises, Further Burdening Fast Track Prospects

Trade Deficit With Korea Balloons 104 Percent as Exports Fall and Imports Surge Under Korea Pact Used as TPP Template

Today’s release of U.S. government trade data covering the full first three years of the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement (FTA) reveals that the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has more than doubled. In addition, today’s U.S. Census Bureau data show Korea FTA outcomes that are the opposite of the Obama administration’s “more exports, more jobs” promise for that pact, which it is now repeating with respect to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as it tries to persuade Congress to delegate Fast Track authority for the TPP.

U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 6 percent, or $2.7 billion, under the Korea FTA’s first three years, while goods imports from Korea have surged 19 percent, or $11.3 billion (comparing the deal’s third year to the year before implementation). As a result, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has swelled 104 percent, or more than $14 billion. The trade deficit increase equates to the loss of more than 93,000 American jobs in the first three years of the Korea FTA, counting both exports and imports, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the Obama administration used to project gains from the deal.

“As if the odds for Fast Track were not already long enough, with most House Democrats and many GOP members stating opposition, today’s unveiling of a job-killing trade deficit surge under the Korea FTA puts a few more nails in Fast Track’s coffin,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Who’s going to buy the argument about Fast Track and the TPP creating ‘more exports, more jobs’ when Obama’s only major trade deal, used as the TPP template, was sold under that very slogan and yet has done the opposite?”

In contrast to the decline in U.S. goods exports to Korea in the FTA’s first three years, U.S. goods exports to the world have risen 2 percent during that time, despite the strengthening value of the dollar. And the 104 percent surge in the U.S.-Korea goods trade deficit under the FTA starkly contrasts with the 5 percent decrease in the global U.S. goods trade deficit during the same period.

Record-breaking U.S. trade deficits with Korea have become the new normal under the FTA – in 35 of the 36 months since the Korea FTA took effect, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly trade deficit seen in the three years before the deal. In January 2015, the monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea topped $3 billion – the highest level on record.

The administration has tried to deflect attention from the failure of its Korea FTA by claiming that its poor performance has been caused by economic stagnation in Korea. However, Korea’s economy has grown during each year of the Korea FTA, while U.S. exports to Korea have not.

U.S. exports to Korea are actually even lower than today’s numbers indicate and the U.S.-Korea trade deficit is even higher, when properly counting only made-in-America exports. The exports data in today’s U.S. Census Bureau release include “foreign exports” – 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, and their inclusion artificially inflates U.S. export figures and deflates U.S. trade deficits with FTA partners.

Each month, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) reports the official U.S. government trade data with foreign exports removed, typically within two days after the U.S. Census Bureau releases the raw data. USITC likely will release the Korea trade data without the distortion of foreign exports by Thursday, May 7, at which point the more accurate – and even more negative – record of the Korea FTA will be made available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/Korea-FTA-3-years.pdf. 

Talking Point in Defense of TPP Is 95% Irrelevant

As the fight intensifies against Fast Track for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - with new members of Congress and more than 2,000 U.S. groups declaring their opposition - the Obama administration has decided not to switch its talking points, but to state the same ones more loudly. 

The administration seems particularly fond of flogging this one in recent TPP-defending speeches, press releases, and Internet memes: “Almost 95% of the world's consumers are outside America’s borders.”

No one is questioning the veracity of this demographic observation.  The question is what it has to do with the TPP.

Not much, as it turns out. Here's why the "95%" statistic is irrelevant for the TPP: 

• U.S. products already enjoy tariff-free access to consumers in most TPP countries. The United States already has Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with six of the 11 TPP negotiating countries, meaning tariffs on U.S. products already have been zeroed out. And in Japan, which comprises 88 percent of the combined gross domestic product of the TPP countries that do not already have a U.S. FTA, the average applied tariff is just 1.2 percent. New Zealand’s average applied tariff is 1.4 percent. Such low barriers are why prominent economists like Paul Krugman have scoffed at the economic significance of the TPP, and why a U.S. government study projects 0.00 percent U.S. economic growth even if all TPP countries eliminated all existing tariffs on all products.

• The remaining three TPP countries account for just 1.7% of the world’s consumers. That includes Brunei, which has a population about the size of Mobile, Alabama.

• In the two TPP countries that actually have sizable populations and average tariffs above a mere 1.5 percent, most people do not earn enough money to purchase many U.S. exports. In Vietnam, the average person earns just $1,740 per year. In Malaysia, which has one third as many consumers as Vietnam, per capita annual income is $10,430. Neither country represents significant purchasing power for exports of U.S.-made products.  

• Even if the TPP represented significant new market access, TPP-style "trade" deals have not succeeded in helping U.S. firms reach consumers outside our borders. The official U.S. government trade data reveal that U.S. goods exports to our existing FTA partners have grown 20 percent slower than U.S. exports to the rest of the world over the last decade. 

Where did the administration get such a weak talking point?  The Chamber of Commerce.  The corporate alliance has been trumpeting the same 95% statistic for at least the last three years.  It appears that rather than create its own sales pitch for the TPP, the administration decided to borrow one straight from the multinational corporations behind the deal.  

Given that this particular talking point is about 95% irrelevant for the TPP, maybe the administration should ask the deal's corporate backers for a new one. 

50 Reasons We Cannot Afford the TPP

How would your state be impacted by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a controversial “free trade” agreement (FTA) being negotiated behind closed doors with 11 Pacific Rim countries? 

Click here for a state-by-state guide to the specific outcomes of the status quo “trade” model that the TPP would expand.  Get the latest government data on how many jobs have been lost in your state to unfair trade, how much inequality has risen, how many family farms have disappeared, and how large your state’s trade deficit with FTA countries has grown. 

The TPP would extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model that has contributed to massive U.S. trade deficits and job loss, downward pressure on middle class wages, unprecedented levels of inequality, lagging exports, new floods of agricultural imports, and the loss of family farms.

These impacts have been felt across all 50 U.S. states.  Here is a sampling of the outcomes:

• North Carolina: North Carolina has lost more than 369,000 manufacturing jobs – nearly half – since NAFTA and NAFTA expansion pacts have taken effect.  More than 212,000 specific North Carolina jobs have been certified under just one narrow Department of Labor program as lost to offshoring or imports since NAFTA.

• Delaware: Delaware’s total goods exports to all U.S. FTA partners have actually fallen 27 percent while its exports to non-FTA nations have grown 34 percent in the last five years. 

• California: In the last five years, California’s $403 million NAFTA agricultural trade surplus became a $187 million trade deficit – a more than $590 million drop. In contrast, California’s agricultural trade surplus with the rest of the world increased by $3 billion, or 79 percent, during the same time period.  The disparity owes to the fact that California’s exports of agricultural products to NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada grew just 27 percent, or $693 million, in the last five years, while its agricultural exports to the rest of the world grew 70 percent, or $4.3 billion. Meanwhile, California’s agricultural imports from NAFTA partners during this period surged $1.3 billion – more than the increase in agricultural imports from all other countries combined.

• Michigan: Michigan’s trade deficit with all U.S. FTA partners is nearly five times larger than its deficit with the rest of the world. Michigan’s FTA deficit has grown more than three times as much as its non-FTA deficit in the last five years. Today, Michigan’s trade deficit with FTA partners comprises 83 percent of the state’s total trade deficit.

• Louisiana: Before the Korea FTA – the U.S. template for the TPP – the United States had balanced trade with Korea in the top 10 products that Louisiana exports to Korea – including everything from metal to agricultural products. Under two years of the FTA, that balance became a $9 billion annual trade deficit. 

• New York: The TPP and the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) would empower 3,067 foreign corporations doing business in New York to bypass domestic courts, go before extrajudicial tribunals, and challenge New York and U.S. health, environmental and other public interest policies that they claim undermine new foreign investor rights not available to domestic firms under U.S. law.

• Texas: U.S. farmers were promised that the Korea FTA would boost U.S. agricultural exports to Korea. But U.S. exports to Korea fell in eight of Texas’ top 10 agricultural export products, from cotton to wheat to meat in the first two years of the Korea FTA.  Meanwhile, U.S. exports to Korea of beef, pork and poultry – all top agricultural exports for Texas – declined 18, 15, and 42 percent, respectively (measuring by volume).

• Nevada: The richest 10 percent of Nevadans are now capturing more than half of all income in the state – a degree of inequality not seen in the 100 years for which records exist.  Study after study has produced an academic consensus that status quo trade has contributed to today’s unprecedented rise in income inequality.  

• Minnesota: Small-scale U.S. family farms have been hardest hit by rising agricultural imports and declining agricultural trade balances under FTAs.  Since NAFTA took effect, 15,500 of Minnesota’s smaller-scale farms (24 percent) have disappeared.

Unhappy Third Birthday for Korea FTA Drags Down Obama Push for Fast Track

U.S. Exports Down, Imports from Korea Up and Job-Killing Trade Deficit With Korea Balloons 84 Percent on Third Anniversary of Korea Pact, Which Is TPP Template

Three years after implementation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), government data reveal that the administration’s promises that the pact would expand U.S. exports and create American jobs proved to be the opposite of the pact’s actual outcomes. The post-Korea FTA decline in U.S. exports to Korea and a new flood of imports from Korea have resulted in a major surge in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea that equates to nearly 85,000 lost U.S. jobs. The abysmal FTA record deals a fresh blow to the administration’s controversial bid to Fast Track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), for which the Korea FTA served as the U.S. template.

“Three years ago we heard the same ‘more exports, more jobs’ sales pitch for the Korea FTA that the administration is making for the TPP, but the reality is that tens of thousands of U.S. jobs have been lost as exports have fallen and trade deficits have surged,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “The only silver lining of the Korea FTA debacle is that it further cripples the administration’s push to Fast Track the TPP, which was literally modeled on the Korea deal, perhaps saving us from more of the same pacts that offshore jobs and push down middle-class wages.”

Contrary to the administration’s promise that the Korea FTA would mean “more exports, more jobs,” U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Agriculture data reveal that:

• The U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has ballooned an estimated 84 percent, or $12.7 billion, in the first three years of the Korea FTA (comparing the year before the FTA took effect to the projected third full year of implementation). In January 2015, the monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea topped $3 billion – the highest level on record.

• The surge in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea under the FTA equates to the loss of nearly 85,000 American jobs, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the administration used to promise job gains from the deal.

• U.S. goods exports to Korea have fallen an estimated 5 percent, or $2.2 billion, in the first three years of the Korea FTA. 

• Had U.S. exports to Korea continued to grow at the rate seen in the decade prior to the Korea FTA’s implementation, U.S. exports to Korea in the FTA’s third year would have been 24 percent, or $9.8 billion, higher than they are actually projected to be.

• Imports of goods from Korea have risen an estimated 18 percent, or $10.5 billion, in the Korea FTA’s first three years.

• U.S. exports to Korea of manufactured goods have stagnated under the Korea FTA, growing an estimated zero percent in the first three years of the deal. U.S. manufactured imports from Korea, meanwhile, have grown an estimated 18 percent under the FTA. As a result, the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit with Korea has grown an estimated 44 percent, or $10.1 billion, since the FTA’s implementation.

• U.S. exports to Korea of agricultural goods have stagnated under the Korea FTA, growing an estimated zero percent in the first three years of the deal – even as U.S. agricultural exports to the world increased 6 percent during the same period. U.S. agricultural imports from Korea, meanwhile, have grown an estimated 28 percent under the FTA. As a result, the U.S. agricultural trade balance with Korea has declined an estimated 1 percent, or $72 million, since the FTA’s implementation.

Given the bleak data, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) may repeat past efforts to try to obscure bad Korea FTA results. Congressional upset about the pacts is fueling opposition to the administration’s push to Fast Track the TPP through Congress. Typical USTR data omissions and distortions regarding the Korea FTA include:

• The USTR likely will count foreign-produced goods as “U.S. exports,” falsely inflating the export figures that can be reported. It is by using this raw Census Department data versus the corrected official U.S International Trade Commission (USITC) trade data that USTR falsely claims that U.S. exports to Korea have grown and were at a record level in 2014.  Despite congressional demands to stop using the distorted data, USTR continues to report export figures that include “foreign exports,” also known as “re-exports.” These are goods made abroad that pass through the United States before being re-exported to other countries. By U.S. Census Bureau definition, foreign exports undergo zero alteration in the United States, and thus support no U.S. production jobs. Each month, the UCITC removes foreign exports from the raw data gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau. But the USTR regularly uses the uncorrected data, inflating the actual U.S. export figures and deflating U.S. trade deficits with FTA partners like Korea. In the first three years of the Korea FTA, foreign exports to Korea have risen an estimated 13 percent, or $284 million, which the USTR may errantly count as an increase in “U.S. exports.”

• The USTR might misrepresent the relatively small increase in U.S. exports to Korea of passenger vehicles under the FTA as a large percentage increase, while omitting both that the touted increase amounts to an estimated 23,000 more passenger vehicles exported from a base of fewer than 15,000 and that imports of passenger vehicles from Korea have surged by an estimated 450,000 vehicles – from about 863,000 to more than 1.3 million in the first three years of the FTA. This trick was included in the USTR’s press release on the FTA’s second anniversary. While U.S. automotive exports to Korea have increased an estimated $686 million in the FTA’s first three years, U.S. automotive imports from Korea have ballooned an estimated $6.4 billion. As a result, the U.S. automotive trade deficit with Korea has increased an estimated 36 percent, or $5.7 billion, in the FTA’s first three years.

• The USTR also may claim, as it did in its press release on the Korea FTA’s second anniversary, that the decline in U.S. exports to Korea under the FTA is due to decreases in exports of fossil fuels and corn. But even after removing fossil fuels and corn products, U.S. exports to Korea still have declined by an estimated $1.4 billion, or 4 percent, in the first three years of the FTA. Product-specific anomalies cannot explain away the broad-based drop in U.S. goods exports to Korea under the FTA.

• The USTR also may try to dismiss the decline in U.S. exports to Korea under the FTA as due to a weak economy in Korea – another claim made in the USTR’s press release on the FTA’s second anniversary. But the Korean economy has grown each year since the FTA passed, even as U.S. exports to Korea have shrunk. Korea’s gross domestic product in 2014 is projected to be 9 percent higher than in the year before the FTA took effect, suggesting that U.S. exports to Korea should have expanded, with or without the FTA, as a simple product of Korea’s economic growth. Instead, U.S. exports to Korea have fallen an estimated 5 percent in the first three years of the FTA. 

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.  

10 Tall Tales on Trade: Fact-Checking Obama’s Top Trade Official

Yesterday was a difficult day for U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman.  He had to go before Congress and explain how the administration’s plan to expand a trade model that has offshored U.S. manufacturing jobs and exacerbated middle class wage stagnation fits with President Obama’s stated “middle class economics” agenda.

Inconveniently for Mr. Froman, it does not.

That did not stop Froman from trying to paint the last two decades of Fast-Tracked, pro-offshoring trade deals – and the administration’s plan for more of the same – as a gift to the middle class. 

The facts he cited to support this depiction actually sounded great.  They just didn’t have the added advantage of being true. 

Here’s a rundown of the top 10 fibs and half-truths that Froman uttered before the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee yesterday in his sales pitch for the administration’s bid to expand the NAFTA “trade” pact model by Fast-Tracking through Congress the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

1. Fast Track Puts Congress in the Driver’s Seat (of a Runaway Car, without Brakes or a Steering Wheel)

Froman: “[Fast Track] puts Congress in the driver’s seat to define U.S. negotiating objectives and priorities for trade agreements.”

Okay, let’s go with this analogy.  If reviving Fast Track puts Congress in the driver’s seat, it also removes the brakes and steering wheel.  Reviving Fast Track would empower the administration to negotiate and sign a sweeping “trade” pact like the TPP – implicating everything from the cost of medicines to the safety of food to the reform of Wall Street – before Congress had any enforceable say over the deal’s contents, even if they contradicted Congress’ stated negotiating objectives.  Goodbye steering wheel.  Congress’ role would be relegated to an expedited, no-amendments, limited-debate vote on the already-signed deal.  Goodbye brakes. 

Also, if we’re talking about Fast Tracking the TPP, the car is already going 60mph.  As a couple of members of Congress pointed out to Froman, the administration has been negotiating the TPP for more than five years, and Froman himself stated that TPP negotiations are in their endgame.  Even if Froman’s assertion were true that Fast Track allows Congress to define priorities for trade agreements (rather than ensuring that such priorities are not enforceable), it’s a little late for members of Congress to be naming priorities for a deal that has been under negotiation since 2009 and that Froman hopes to close in the coming months.

2. A Trade Surplus with Our FTA Partners (Does Not Appear in Official Government Data)

Froman: “You take all of our FTA partners as a whole, [and] we have a trade surplus. And that trade surplus has grown.”  Froman also claimed that the United States has a trade surplus in manufactured goods with its FTA partners.  And he tried to use red herrings to explain away the surging U.S. trade deficit with Korea under the Korea FTA.

These claims defy official U.S. government data.  Data from the U.S. International Trade Commission show that the United States has a $180 billion U.S. goods trade deficit with all free trade agreement (FTA) partners (in 2013, the latest year on record).  In manufactured goods, the United States has a $51 billion manufacturing trade deficit with all FTA partners.  Froman claimed otherwise, in part, by counting billions of dollars’ worth of "foreign exports" – goods produced abroad that simply pass through the United States without alteration before being “re-exported.”  These goods, by definition, do not support U.S. production jobs.

Contributing to our FTA deficit is the 50 percent surge in the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea in just the first two years of the Korea FTA, which literally was used as the U.S. template for the TPP. This deficit increase, owing to a drop in exports and rise in imports, spells the loss of more than 50,000 American jobs in the FTA's first two years, according to the ratio used by the administration to claim the pact would create jobs. Froman tried to explain away the ballooning U.S. trade deficit under the Korea FTA as due to decreases in corn and fossil fuel exports.  But even if discounting both corn and fossil fuels, U.S. annual exports to Korea still fell under the FTA, and the annual trade deficit with Korea still soared.  Product-specific anomalies cannot explain away the broad-based downfall of U.S. exports to Korea under the FTA, which afflicted nine of the top 15 U.S. sectors that export to Korea. The disappointing results also cannot be blamed on low growth in Korea since the FTA.  Though Korea's growth rates in the last several years have not been spectacular, the economy has still grown since the FTA (3 percent in 2013), as has consumption (2.2 percent, adjusted for inflation, in 2013). Koreans are buying more goods, just not U.S. goods. 

 

3.  We Wish to Ensure Access to Affordable Medicines in the TPP (but Big Pharma Won’t Let Us)

Froman: “In negotiations, like TPP, we are working to ensure access to affordable life-saving medicines, including in the developing world, and create incentives for the development of new treatment and cures that benefit the world and which create the pipeline for generic drugs.”

These words play politics with people’s lives. They cloak the tragic reality that if the TPP would take effect as USTR has proposed, with leaks showing even greater monopoly protections for pharmaceutical corporations than in prior pacts, people would needlessly die for lack of access to affordable medicines. A new study finds, for example, that the TPP would dramatically reduce the share of Vietnam’s HIV patients who have access to life-saving antiretroviral medicines.  The study reveals that while 68 percent of Vietnam’s eligible HIV patients currently receive treatment, U.S.-proposed monopoly protections for pharmaceutical corporations in the TPP would allow only 30 percent of Vietnam’s HIV patients to access antiretrovirals.  As a result, an estimated 45,000 people with HIV in Vietnam who currently receive antiretroviral treatment would no longer be able to afford the life-saving drugs.

Froman also indicated in the Senate hearing that USTR is pushing to include a special monopoly protection for pharmaceutical firms that contradicts the Obama administration’s own stated objectives for reducing the cost of medicines in the United States. President Obama’s budget proposes to reduce a special monopoly protection for pharmaceutical firms with regard to biologic medicines – drugs used to combat cancer and other diseases that cost approximately 22 times more than conventional medicines.  To lower the exorbitant prices and the resulting burden on programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the Obama administration’s 2015 budget would reduce the period of Big Pharma's monopoly protection for biologics from 12 to seven years. The administration estimates this would save taxpayers more than $4.2 billion over the next decade just for federal programs. However, Froman suggested yesterday that USTR continues to push for the 12 years of corporate protection in the TPP, which would lock into place pharmaceutical firms’ lengthy monopolies here at home while effectively scrapping the administration’s own proposal to save billions in unnecessary healthcare costs.

4. Most Exporters are Small Businesses (that Have Endured Slow and Falling Exports under FTAs)

Froman: “15,600 firms export from Pennsylvania. Almost 90 percent of them are small and medium sized businesses. And the question is whether with these trade agreements we can create more opportunities for these kinds of businesses.”

Implying that exporting is mainly the domain of small businesses because they make up most exporting firms is like implying that the NBA is a league of short people because most NBA players are shorter than 7 feet tall.  The reason small and medium enterprises (defined as 500 employees or less) comprise most U.S. exporting firms is simply because they constitute 99.7 percent of U.S. firms overall (in the same way that those of us below 7 feet constitute more than 99 percent of the U.S. population).  The more relevant question is what share of small and medium firms actually depend on exports for their success. Only 3 percent of U.S. small and medium enterprises 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 they don’t, per the government data noted below), exporting is primarily the domain of large corporations, not small businesses.

As for whether “with these trade agreements we can create more opportunities” for small firms, the record of past FTAs suggests not. Under the Korea FTA, U.S. small businesses have seen their exports to Korea decline even more sharply than large firms (a 14 percent vs. 3 percent downfall in the first year of the FTA). And small firms’ exports to Mexico and Canada under NAFTA have grown more slowly than their exports to the rest of the world. Small businesses’ exports to all non-NAFTA countries grew over 50 percent more than their exports to Canada and Mexico (74 percent vs. 47 percent) during a 1996-2012 window of data availability. The sluggish export growth owes in part to the fact that small businesses’ exports grew less than half as much as large firms’ exports to NAFTA partners (47 percent vs. 97 percent from 1996-2012).

5. We Try to Be Transparent (with the Corporate Advisors Who Can Access Secret Texts)

Froman: “And to ensure these agreements are balanced, we seek a diversity of voices in America’s trade policy. The Administration has taken unprecedented steps to increase transparency… We have held public hearings soliciting the public’s input on the negotiations and suspended negotiating rounds to host first-of-a-kind stakeholder events so that the public can provide our negotiators with direct feedback on the negotiations.”

“A diversity of voices” is an odd way to describe the more than 500 official trade advisors with privileged access to secretive U.S. trade texts and U.S. trade negotiators.  About nine out of ten of these advisors explicitly represent industry interests. Just 10 of the more than 500 advisors (less than 2 percent) represent environmental, consumer, development, food safety, financial regulation, Internet freedom, or public health organizations.  It’s little wonder that so many of these groups, excluded from setting the content of the TPP, have denounced leaked TPP texts as presenting threats to the public interest.  And as for the claim of “unprecedented steps to increase transparency,” the reality is closer to the opposite. When the Bush administration negotiated the last similarly sweeping trade pact – the Free Trade Area of the Americas – USTR published the negotiating text online for anyone to see amid negotiations. In a step backwards from the degree of transparency exhibited by the Bush administration, the Obama administration has refused repeated calls from members of Congress and civil society organizations to release TPP texts. This secrecy limits the utility of the public hearings and stakeholder events that Froman touts, as it is difficult to opine on a text you are prohibited from seeing.

6. Supporting Manufacturing and Higher Wages (Is a Goal in Spite of Our Trade Policies)

Froman: “In 2015, the Obama Administration will continue to pursue trade policies aimed at supporting the growth of manufacturing and associated high-quality jobs here at home and maintaining American manufacturers’ competitive edge.”

The only objectionable word in this sentence is “continue.” Since NAFTA, we have endured a net loss of nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs – one out of every four – and more than 57,000 manufacturing facilities. While not all of those losses are due to NAFTA, the deal’s inclusion of special protections for firms that relocate abroad certainly contributed to the hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing. The U.S. manufactured goods trade balance with Canada and Mexico in NAFTA’s first 20 years changed from a $5 billion surplus in 1993 to a $64.9 billion deficit in 2013. The U.S. Department of Labor has certified (under one narrow program) more than 845,000 specific U.S. workers – many of them in manufacturing – as enduring “trade-related” job losses since NAFTA due to the offshoring of their factories to Mexico or Canada, or import competition from those countries. And under just two years of the Korea FTA, U.S. manufacturing exports to Korea have fallen. Overall, the United States has a $51 billion trade deficit in manufactured goods with its 20 FTA partners. Reviving manufacturing and reviving Fast Track for the NAFTA-expanding TPP are incompatible.

Froman: “At a time when too many workers haven't seen their paychecks grow in much too long, these jobs typically pay up to 18% more on average than non-export related jobs.” 

Froman neglects to mention a key reason that too many workers haven’t seen their paychecks grow: NAFTA-style deals have not only incentivized the offshoring of well-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs, but forced these workers to compete for lower-paid service sector jobs, which has contributed to downward pressure on wages even in non-offshoreable sectors.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about three out of every five displaced manufacturing workers who were rehired in 2014 experienced a wage reduction. About one out of every three displaced manufacturing workers took a pay cut of greater than 20 percent. As increasing numbers of American workers, displaced from better-paying jobs by current trade policies, have joined the glut of workers competing for non-offshoreable jobs in retail, hospitality and healthcare, real wages have actually been declining in these growing sectors. A litany of studies has produced an academic consensus that such trade dynamics have contributed to the historic increase in U.S. income inequality – the only debate is the degree to which trade is to blame. The TPP would not only replicate, but actually expand, NAFTA’s extraordinary privileges for firms that relocate abroad and eliminate many of the usual risks that make firms think twice about moving to low-wage countries like Vietnam – a TPP negotiating partner where minimum wages average less than 60 cents an hour, making the country a low-cost offshoring alternative to even China.

7. The TPP Supports an Internet that Is Open (to Lawsuits for Common Online Activity)

Froman: "We will continue to support a free and open Internet that encourages the flow of information across the digital world."

Repetition of this platitude has failed to assuage the concerns of Internet freedom groups that point out that leaked TPP texts do not support Froman’s assurances. In a July 2014 letter, an array of Internet service providers, tech companies, and Internet freedom groups wrote to Froman about leaked TPP copyright terms, some of which resemble provisions in the defeated Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which could “significantly constrain legitimate online activity and innovation.”  Noting the deal’s terms on Internet service provider liability, the groups stated, “We are worried about language that would force service providers throughout the region to monitor and policy their users’ actions on the internet, pass on automated takedown notices, block websites and disconnect Internet users.”

8. Our Exports Have Grown (More Quickly to Non-FTA Countries)

Froman: “Our total exports have grown by nearly 50 percent and contributed nearly one-third of our economic growth since the second quarter of 2009. In 2013, the most recent year on record, American exports reached a record high of $2.3 trillion...” “By opening rapidly expanding markets with millions of new middle-class consumers in parts of the globe like the Asia-Pacific, our trade agreements will help our businesses and workers access overseas markets...”

U.S. goods exports grew by a grand total of 0 percent in 2013.   The year before that, they grew by 2 percent.  As a result, the administration utterly failed to reach President Obama’s stated goal to double U.S. exports from 2009 to 2014. Most of the export growth Froman cites – which is less than half of the administration’s stated objective – came early in Obama’s tenure as a predictable rebound from the global recession that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.  At the abysmal export growth rate seen since then, we will not reach Obama’s stated goal to double 2009’s exports until 2054, 40 years behind schedule.  

Froman ironically uses this export growth drop-off to argue for more-of-the-same trade policy (e.g. the TPP).  The data simply does not support the oft-parroted pitch that we need TPP-style FTAs to boost exports.  In the first two years of the Korea FTA, U.S. exports to Korea have fallen 5 percent.  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.  That’s not a solid basis from which to argue, in the name of exports, for yet another FTA. 

And if we’re seeking to export to those countries that are growing the fastest, then the TPP is the wrong trade pact.  Of the TPP countries with which we do not already have an FTA, all but one are actually growing more slowly than the per capita growth rate of the East Asian and Pacific region overall.     

9. Increases in Food Exports (Have Been Swamped by a Surge in Food Imports)

Froman: “In 2013, U.S. farmers and ranchers exported a record $148.7 billion of food and agricultural goods to consumers around the world.”

Yes, U.S. food exports have increased, but not nearly as much as food imports. In 2013, the total volume of U.S. food exports stood just 0.5 percent higher than in 1995, while imports of food into the United States had more than doubled (growing 115 percent since 1995). Existing FTAs have contributed to the imbalanced food trade. The average annual U.S. agricultural deficit with Canada and Mexico under NAFTA’s first two decades reached $975 million, almost three times the pre-NAFTA level. And under the first two years of the Korea FTA, U.S. agricultural exports to Korea plummeted 34 percent. Smaller-scale U.S. family farms have been hardest hit. About 170,000 small U.S. family farms have gone under since NAFTA and NAFTA expansion pacts have taken effect, a 21 percent decrease in the total number.

10. The TPP Takes Heed of NAFTA’s Mistakes (and Builds on Them)

Froman: “I think the President has made clear that as we pursue a new trade policy, we need to learn from the experiences of the past and that’s certainly what we’re doing through TPP and the rest of our agenda. For example, when he was running for President, he said we ought to renegotiate NAFTA. What that meant was to make labor and environment not side issues that weren’t enforceable, but to bring labor and environment in the core of the agreement and make them enforceable just like any other provision of the trade agreement consistent with what Congress and the previous administration worked out in the so-called May 10^th agreement.”

When candidate Obama said in 2008 that he would renegotiate NAFTA – a pact that had become broadly unpopular for incentivizing the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing jobs – most people probably didn’t imagine that he meant expanding those offshoring incentives further. But the TPP would extend further NAFTA’s extraordinary privileges for firms that relocate abroad to low-wage countries (like TPP negotiating partner Vietnam).  Most people also probably would not expect “learning from the experiences of the past” to lead to an expansion of the monopoly protections that NAFTA gave to pharmaceutical corporations, thereby reducing the availability of generics and increasing the cost of medicines. But Froman himself stated yesterday that such corporate protections – antithetical to textbook notions of “free trade” – are part of the TPP’s NAFTA-plus provisions.

And though Froman touts the May 10 deal as an improvement over NAFTA for labor rights, a recent government report has shown the May 10 provisions to be ineffective at curbing labor abuses in FTA partner countries. A November 2014 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found broad labor rights violations across all five surveyed FTA partner countries, regardless of whether or not the FTA included the labor provisions of the vaunted May 10 deal, including unionist murders in Colombia and impunity for union-busting in Peru.  Several of the TPP negotiating partners are notorious labor rights abusers – four of them were cited in a recent Department of Labor report for using child and/or forced labor. Vietnam, meanwhile, outright bans independent unions. Why would incorporation of the same terms that have failed to curb labor abuses in existing FTAs be expected to end the systematic labor rights abuses of TPP partners? 

And despite the May 10 deal’s environmental provisions, the TPP’s extraordinary investment provisions would empower thousands of foreign firms to bypass domestic courts, go before extrajudicial tribunals, and challenge new domestic environmental protections as "frustrating their expectations." Corporations have already used such foreign investor privileges under existing U.S. FTAs to attack a moratorium on fracking, renewable energy programs, and requirements to clean up oil pollution and industrial toxins.  Tribunals comprised of three private attorneys have already ordered taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions to foreign firms for such safeguards, arguing that they violate sweeping FTA-granted investor privileges that the TPP would expand.  Provisions, such as those in the May 10 deal, that call for countries to enforce their environmental laws sound hollow under a TPP that would simultaneously empower corporations to “sue” countries for said enforcement. 

Obama vs. Obama: The State of the Union's Self-Defeating Trade Pitch

In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama called for job creation, reduced income inequality, more affordable healthcare and better regulation of Wall Street. 

He also called for Fast Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a controversial “trade” deal that would undermine all of the above.

Here's a side-by-side analysis of how Obama's push to Fast Track the TPP contradicts his own State of the Union agenda:

Obama’s Agenda	The TPP’s Counter-Agenda
Income Inequality: “Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”	An “economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well” is actually the projected outcome of the TPP. A recent study finds that the TPP would spell a pay cut for all but the richest 10 percent of U.S. workers by exacerbating U.S. income inequality, just as past trade deals have done.
Manufacturing revival: “More than half of manufacturing executives have said they’re actively looking at bringing jobs back from China. Let’s give them one more reason to get it done.”	The TPP would give manufacturing firms a reason to offshore jobs to Vietnam, not bring them back from China. The TPP would expand NAFTA’s special protections for firms that offshore American manufacturing, including to Vietnam, where minimum wages are a fraction of those paid in China. Since NAFTA, we have endured a net loss of more than 57,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities and nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs.
American jobs: “So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America.”	TPP rules would gut the popular Buy American preferences that require government-purchased goods to be made here in America, preventing us from recycling our tax dollars back into our economy to create U.S. jobs.
Exports: “Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages.”	Those who wish for more exports should wish for a different trade agenda. U.S. exports to countries that are part of TPP-like deals have actually grown slower than exports to the rest of the world, according to government data. Under the Korea deal that literally served as the template for the TPP, U.S. exports have actually fallen.
Small businesses: “21st century businesses, including small businesses, need to sell more American products overseas.”	Small businesses have endured declining exports and export shares under pacts serving as the model for the TPP. Small businesses suffered a steeper downfall in exports than large firms under the Korea trade pact, and small businesses’ export share has declined under NAFTA.
Economic growth: “Maintaining the conditions for growth and competitiveness. This is where America needs to go.”	An official U.S. government study finds that the economic growth we could expect from the TPP is precisely zero, while economists like Paul Krugman have scoffed at the deal’s economic significance.
Middle class wages: “Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages.”	The TPP would put downward pressure on middle class wages, just as NAFTA has, by offshoring the jobs of decently-paid American manufacturing workers and forcing them to compete for lower-paying, non-offshoreable jobs.
Legacy of past trade deals: “Look, I’m the first one to admit that past trade deals haven’t always lived up to the hype, and that’s why we’ve gone after countries that break the rules at our expense.”	Past trade deals have resulted in massive trade deficits and job loss not because the pacts’ rules have been broken, but because of the rules themselves. The TPP would double down on NAFTA’s rules – the opposite of Obama’s promise to renegotiate the unpopular pact – by expanding NAFTA’s offshoring incentives, limits on food safety standards, restrictions on financial regulation and other threats to American workers and consumers.
Affordable medicines: “…middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change. That means helping folks afford …health care…”	The TPP would directly contradict Obama’s efforts to reduce U.S. healthcare costs by expanding monopoly patent protections that jack up medicine prices and by imposing restrictions on the U.S. government’s ability to negotiate or mandate lower drug prices for taxpayer-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Wall Street regulation: “We believed that sensible regulations could prevent another crisis…Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts, and a new consumer watchdog to protect us from predatory lending and abusive credit card practices…We can’t put the security of families at risk by…unraveling the new rules on Wall Street…”	Senator Warren has warned that the TPP could help banks unravel the new rules on Wall Street by prohibiting bans on risky financial products and “too big to fail” safeguards while empowering foreign banks to “sue” the U.S. government over new financial regulations.
Internet freedom: “I intend to protect a free and open internet…”	The TPP includes rules that implicate net neutrality and that would require Internet service providers to police our Internet activity – rules similar to those in the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that was rejected as a threat to Internet freedom.
National interests: “But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen?”	With the TPP, multinational corporations want to write the rules that would put our workers at a disadvantage and undermine our national interests. TPP rules, written behind closed doors under the advisement of hundreds of official corporate advisers, would provide benefits for firms that offshore American jobs, help pharmaceutical corporations expand monopoly patent protections that drive up medicine prices, give banks new tools to roll back Wall Street regulations, and empower foreign firms to “sue” the U.S. government over health and environmental policies. Why would we let that happen?

Obama’s Legacy: Middle-Class Jobs, Affordable Medicine and Financial Stability, or Fast-Tracked Trade Agreements – But Not Both

New Report ‘Prosperity Undermined’ Fact Checks Administration, Corporate Lobbyists and GOP Leadership With 20 Years of Data on Jobs, Economy

Fast Tracked trade deals have exacerbated the income inequality crisis, pushed good American jobs overseas, driven down U.S. wages, exploded the trade deficit and diminished small businesses’ share of U.S. exports, a new report from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch shows. The report, “Prosperity Undermined,”compiles and analyzes 20 years of trade and economic data to show that the arguments again being made in favor of providing the Obama administration with Fast Track trade authority have repeatedly proved false.

President Barack Obama is expected to push Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The pact, initiated by George W. Bush, literally replicates most of the job-offshoring incentives and wage-crunching terms found in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and would roll back Obama administration achievements on health, financial regulation and more. 

“It’s not surprising that Democrats and Republicans alike are speaking out against Fast Track because it cuts Congress out of shaping trade pacts that most Americans believe cost jobs while empowering the president to sign and enter into secret deals before Congress approves them,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “In their speeches and commentary, the administration, corporate interests and GOP leadership disregard the real, detrimental impacts that previous fast tracked trade deals – which serve as the model for the Trans-Pacific Partnership – have had on America’s middle class over the past 20 years.”

With unprecedented unity among Democratic members of Congress, there will be a handful of Democratic House votes in favor of Fast Track. Last year, seven of 201 House Democrats  supported Fast Track legislation. Meanwhile, a sizable bloc of GOP House members oppose Fast Track, which would grant the president extensive new executive powers and delegate away core congressional constitutional authorities.

The new report shows a 20-year record of massive U.S. trade deficits, American job losses and wage suppression. More specifically, data show that:

• Trade Deficits Have Exploded: U.S. trade deficits have grown more than 440 percent with Fast Tracked U.S. FTA countries since the pacts were implemented, but declined 16 percent with non-FTA countries during the relevant period. Since Fast Track was used to enact NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, the U.S. goods trade deficit has more than quadrupled, from $216 billion to $870 billion. Small businesses’ share of U.S. exports has declined, while U.S. export growth to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to FTA partners by 30 percent over the past decade.  ‘

• Good American Jobs Were Destroyed: Nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs – one in four – were lost since the Fast Tracking of NAFTA and various NAFTA-expansion deals. Since NAFTA, more than 845,000 U.S. workers have been certified under just one narrow U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) program for Americans who have lost their jobs due to imports from Canada and Mexico and offshored factories to those countries.

• U.S. Wages Have Stagnated, Inequality Soared: Three of every five manufacturing workers who lose jobs to trade and find reemployment take pay cuts, with one in three losing greater than 20 percent, according to DOL data. Overall, U.S. wages have barely increased in real terms since 1974 – the year that Fast Track was first enacted – while American worker productivity has doubled. Since Fast Track’s enactment, the share of national income captured by the richest 10 percent of Americans has shot up 51 percent, while that captured by the richest 1 percent has skyrocketed 146 percent. Study after study has revealed an academic consensus that status quo trade has contributed to today’s unprecedented rise in income inequality.

• Food Exports Flat, Imports Soared: Under NAFTA and the WTO, U.S. food exports have stagnated while food imports have doubled. The average annual U.S. agricultural deficit with Canada and Mexico under NAFTA’s first two decades reached $975 million, almost three times the pre-NAFTA level. Approximately 170,000 small U.S. family farms have gone under since NAFTA and WTO took effect.

• Damaging Results of Obama’s “New and Improved” Korea Trade Deal: Since the Obama administration used Fast Track to push a trade agreement with Korea, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown 50 percent – which equates to 50,000 more American jobs lost. The U.S. had a $3 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea in October 2014 – the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with the country on record. After the Korea FTA went into effect, U.S. small businesses’ exports to Korea declined more sharply than large firms’ exports, falling 14 percent.

“Big dollars for big corporations and special interests calling the shots – that’s what the American people hear when only the country’s top corporate lobbyists are shaping America’s trade agreements,” said Wallach. “With such high stakes, we cannot let the Fast Track process lock Congress and the public out of negotiations that will have lasting impacts on the livelihoods, rights and freedoms of American families, workers and businesses.”

Read the report.          

Report Funded by Big Business Explains to Small Businesses What's Best for Them

The Atlantic Council has just released another report cheerleading the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), the controversial U.S.-EU deal under negotiation, also known as TTIP.

The report pitches the deal as a gift to small businesses.

It was financed by FedEx, the 64^th largest corporation in the United States. 

Why did the Atlantic Council need to call on big business to try to persuade us that TAFTA would be good for small businesses? 

The report itself provides the answer: “Those [small and medium enterprises, or SMEs] that have heard of the negotiations tend to believe that TTIP is designed principally to help large companies…”

That is, small businesses do not see TAFTA as a deal that is intended to further their interests, but those of their outsized competitors.

That view makes sense, given small firms’ experience under past free trade agreements (FTAs), including the deal implemented in 2012 with Korea. The Atlantic Council’s report claims, without citing a source, that SMEs have seen exports grow under the Korea FTA. 

Not according to the U.S. government. U.S. Census Bureau data reveal that both small and large U.S. firms saw their exports to Korea fall in the year the FTA was implemented (the latest year of data availability), compared to the year before implementation. 

In fact, small firms have endured the steepest downfall of exports to Korea under the FTA. U.S. firms with fewer than 100 employees saw exports to Korea drop 12 percent while firms with more than 500 employees saw exports only decline by 1 percent.  As a result, under the Korea FTA, small businesses are capturing an even smaller share of the value of U.S. exports to Korea (just 16 percent), while big businesses are capturing a larger share.

Perhaps anticipating small firms’ “tendency to believe” that another FTA would disadvantage them relative to their large competitors, the Atlantic Council decided to forego a broad-based, statistically-relevant survey of small firms’ views on TAFTA.  Instead, the think tank “interviewed several representatives” of a few hand-picked firms. 

But even this small, anecdotal exercise did not report the small businesses’ aggregate answers to fundamental questions, such as “Have you heard of TAFTA?” or “Based on what you know about TAFTA, are you in favor of such an agreement?” 

Those aren’t hypothetical questions. Indeed, they were part of the Atlantic Council’s survey, which can be found online.  

Why didn’t the Atlantic Council report the aggregate responses to its own survey questions?  Maybe because the results were not what the think tank sought.  A call to the Atlantic Council indicated that small firms who received the survey were largely unresponsive to questions about how TTIP would benefit them. 

The lack of interest from small businesses comes despite the Atlantic Council’s efforts to sell the deal in the text of the survey.  Abandoning any pretense of impartiality, the survey informed businesses that TAFTA was “an ambitious effort to create sustainable economic growth and job creation in the United States and European Union” before asking if they supported the deal. 

Small firms’ non-responsiveness begs the obvious question: shouldn’t the fact that small businesses are not interested in cheerleading another FTA be cause for concern about the FTA?  When an invitation to name the benefits of a prospective deal is met with silence, it should probably prompt one to question the deal’s merits.

It probably should not prompt one to ask FedEx to sponsor a report intent on explaining to small businesses what’s best for them.  

Chamber of Commerce Uses “Weird Facts” to Claim a $106 Billion Trade Deficit Isn’t There

The Chamber of Commerce is a place of magic.  For its latest trick, the corporate alliance tried to make a $106 billion trade deficit disappear.

The Chamber took to its blog last week to highlight for readers “One Weird Fact About the Trade Deficit No One Has Noticed.”  Here’s the claimed “fact”: “in 2012 — for the 20 countries with which the United States has entered into a free-trade agreement (FTA) — the trade deficit vanished.”

A disappearing U.S. trade deficit with our FTA partners?  That’s not just weird – it’s incredible.  As in, not credible. 

Want to know why “no one has noticed” this oddity?  Because it didn’t happen. 

In 2012 the U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners topped $106 billion.  That includes trade in goods and services.  (If you just count goods, the deficit was $178 billion.) 

And that mammoth FTA trade deficit is not “vanishing.”  The estimated U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners in 2013 is exactly the same: $106 billion. 

Indeed, the aggregate U.S. goods trade deficit with FTA partners has actually increased by more than $147 billion 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).

The Chamber goes on to claim, “The United States has recorded a trade surplus in manufactured goods with its FTA partner countries for each of the past five years.”  The opposite is true.  The U.S. has run a major trade deficit in manufactured goods with its FTA partners in each of the last five years.  The average FTA manufacturing trade deficit during this period exceeded $48 billion. Last year, it topped $51 billion.

How does the Chamber claim to not see glaring FTA trade deficits?  By using some “weird facts” of its own. 

The Chamber distorts the data by counting “foreign exports” as “U.S. exports.”  Foreign exports are foreign-made goods that pass through the United States without alteration before being re-exported abroad.  Along the way, they support zero U.S. production jobs.  And yet, the Chamber includes foreign-made exports alongside U.S.-made exports as if they had the same value for U.S. workers.

Doing so dramatically deflates the size of the actual U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners.  By errantly including foreign exports, the 2012 goods trade deficit with FTA partners can be made to look less than 40 percent of its actual size ($71 billion vs. the true deficit of $178 billion).  The distortion was even worse in 2013, when the actual FTA goods trade deficit was nearly three times as large as the distorted deficit with foreign exports included ($67 billion vs. the true deficit of $180 billion). 

The graph below shows how this single data trick allows the Chamber to claim that a $106 billion FTA trade deficit has disappeared.  As the administration contemplates expanding the old deficit-ridden FTA model via the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, it seems that we should be looking at the actual evidence from past FTAs, not illusions. 

A footnote on data availability: services data are not available for some FTA countries, particularly the smaller economies.  The missing data were not included in either the Chamber’s figures or those reported above.  Also, while the Chamber did not report figures for 2013 due to a claimed lack of available services data for that year, 2013 services data is actually available for all but two of the FTA partners for which 2012 data were available.  For those two countries, services data for 2013 has been extrapolated based on observed growth trends.

Advocacy = Results: Proposal to Disguise Offshoring Shelved after Groundswell of Opposition

Can one person make a difference?  Hard to say.  But apparently 26,000 of them can. 

About a month ago we warned of an administration proposal to reclassify U.S. corporations that offshore their manufacturing as “factoryless goods” manufacturers.  Calling Apple a “manufacturer” – though its iPhones are made in Foxconn factories in China – defies common sense.  But why does it matter? 

Because it would mask the erosion of U.S. manufacturing incentivized by offshoring-friendly policies, including a raft of unfair trade deals.  The Orwellian proposal would undermine efforts to replace more-of-the-same policies with a fair trade model. 

Under the proposal, reported U.S. “manufacturing” jobs and wages would balloon overnight, as brand managers and programmers would suddenly be counted as “manufacturing” workers.  The broad reclassification initiative would also deceptively deflate the large U.S. manufacturing trade deficit.  U.S. imports of made-in-China iPhones would not be tallied as manufactured goods imports but as imports of Foxconn's “services,” while iPhones exported from China to, say, Europe would actually be rebranded as “U.S.” manufacturing exports.  

During an official period to comment on the proposal, Public Citizen, many labor groups, and other allies invited people to send their two cents to the administration.  The response was overwhelming. 

In short order, about 26,000 people filed comments in opposition to the “factoryless goods” proposal.  The last time the administration tried to implement this proposal, they received 10 comments.

This past Friday, the administration responded.  This announcement appeared in the Federal Register:

“Given these initial research results and the large number of public comments submitted on the topic of FGPs [Factoryless Goods Producers], OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] here announces that the FGP recommendation will not be implemented in 2017.” 

If you submitted a comment, congratulations.  According to the administration, your voice of reason contributed to a chorus that helped convince the administration to rethink the wisdom of categorizing firms that do not manufacture anything as U.S. manufacturers.  Advocacy, as it turns out, can work. 

Please place your hand above your back and pat vigorously.  But don’t break out the champagne glasses.

Thanks to the groundswell of public opposition (and the contributions of some clear-minded naysayers within the administration), the “factoryless goods” proposal has been shelved.  But it has not been dustbinned. 

OMB makes clear that the “factoryless goods” fantasy will likely emerge again, albeit in a different form:

“Without the deadline imposed by the 2017 NAICS revisions, the relevant statistical agencies will now have the opportunity to complete the additional research, testing, and evaluation needed to determine the feasibility of developing methods for the consistent identification and classification of FGPs that are accurate and reliable. This process will also be informed by questions raised in public comments. Results of this research, testing, and evaluation could lead to a different FGP proposal for consideration or implementation.”

As "factoryless goods" proponents regroup and decide what to do next, we will remain vigilant.  Future bouts of pressure will likely be needed to keep our data, and the policymaking that it informs, free of distortion.  As we push to change our trade policies, we will need to keep pushing against efforts to simply change our numbers. 

But for now, kudos.  

Administration Flooded with 26,000 Comments Opposing Proposal to Disguise Offshoring of U.S. Manufacturing

Broad Reclassification Plan Would Count iPhones Made in China as U.S. Exports; Data Tricks Would Artificially Inflate U.S. Manufacturing Jobs, Deflate Manufacturing Trade Deficits

More than 26,000 people nationwide have submitted comments opposing Obama administration proposals that would severely distort U.S. job and trade data by reclassifying U.S. corporations that offshore American jobs as “factoryless goods” manufacturers. Under a broad data reclassification plan, much of the value of U.S. brand-name goods assembled by foreign workers and imported here for sale would no longer be counted as imported goods, but rather as manufacturing “services” imports. This would deceptively deflate the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit.

The “factoryless goods” proposal, designed by the administration’s Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC), also would, overnight, falsely increase the reported number of U.S. manufacturing jobs as white-collar employees in firms like Apple – now rebranded as “factoryless goods producers” – would suddenly be counted as “manufacturing” workers. This shift also would create a false increase in U.S. manufacturing wages and output.

“The only reason you would classify an iPhone made in China as a U.S. export is to hide the size of our massive trade deficit,” said James P. Hoffa, Teamsters general president.

“To revive American manufacturing jobs and production, we need to change our policies, not cook the data,” said Brad Markell, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council. “We need to reform the trade policies that have incentivized offshoring and resulted in decades of trade deficits and millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs offshored, not cover up the evidence that our current trade policy is not working.”

One element of the proposed economic data reclassification plan would rebrand U.S. imports of goods manufactured abroad, such as Apple’s iPhone (which is assembled in China by a firm called Foxconn) as “services” imports rather than imports of manufactured goods. And if Foxconn exported iPhones to other countries, the proposed reclassifications would count the iPhones manufactured in China as U.S. manufactured goods exports, further belying the real U.S. manufacturing trade deficit. 

The economic data reclassification initiative, if implemented, could further undermine efforts to bolster U.S. manufacturing by producing a fabricated reduction of the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit.

“These Orwellian data rebranding proposals would hide the damage wrought by past trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, greasing the way for more-of-the-same, job-killing, deficit-boosting trade deals,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The comments submitted by concerned individuals include:

• “Reclassifying jobs that have been and continue to be shipped overseas under the euphemism ‘factoryless goods’ is an insult to the citizens of the United States who want real manufacturing jobs, and know that the TPP and other NAFTA-style trade deals are not in our best interest.” – Susan Marie Frontczak, Boulder, Colorado

• “Put the tricks aside. It's time to address the bad trade policies that have led to incentivized offshoring, rather than play with rebranding.” – Merill Cole, Macomb, Illinois

• “NAFTA and GATT were a really bad idea ... TPP is worse ... and ECPC as a cover-up for unfair trade policies is just ridiculous. Bring manufacturing back to the US and stop this unfair trading with other countries.” – Aaron McGee, Madison, Wisconsin

This month, 14 members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman, demanding that he immediately begin to provide Congress with accurate U.S. trade data. The letter followed an admission by USTR staff that the agency was providing Congress with uncorrected raw data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. That data includes “re-exports,” which are goods produced in foreign countries that pass through the United States without alteration before being sold abroad.

Each month, the U.S. International Trade Commission provides corrected trade data that removes the foreign re-exports, but USTR has chosen not to use this data. By using the uncorrected data, the USTR can misleadingly appear to make more than half the $177 billion 2013 NAFTA goods trade deficit “disappear.” The USTR does this by, for instance, counting goods that are imported from China, that are not altered in the United States and that are then “re-exported” to Mexico as “U.S. exports” to Mexico.

Congress’ demand for accurate trade data from the USTR and the administration’s distortionary data reclassification proposals come as administration officials seek support for two controversial trade and investment pacts now under negotiation: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). The administration’s push to obtain Fast Track authority for those pacts has met strong opposition from both parties in Congress and from more than 60 percent of the U.S. voting public. 

Let’s Just Pretend We Didn’t Offshore Manufacturing

Is an iPhone made in China and exported to Europe a U.S. export?

Is an Apple executive a manufacturing worker?

Yes, and yes.  At least those could become the answers if a new proposal afoot among some in the administration is allowed to take effect.  Federal agencies grouped under the bland-sounding Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC) are proposing to radically redefine U.S. manufacturing and trade statistics. 

Under the proposal, U.S. firms that have offshored their production abroad – like Apple – would become “factoryless goods” manufacturers.  The foreign factories that actually manufacture the goods – like the notorious iPhone-producing Foxconn factories in China – would no longer be manufacturers, but “service” providers for the rebranded “manufacturing” firms like Apple.

It appears the administration has been reading Orwell. 

But the problem with this proposed redefinition is not merely that it offends common sense.  The “factoryless goods” proposal would deceptively deflate the size of reported, but not actual, U.S. manufacturing trade deficits, while artificially inflating the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs overnight.

While some details of the proposal remain open-ended, one thing is clear: this maneuver would obscure the erosion of U.S. manufacturing.  It would disguise the mass-offshoring of U.S. middle-class factory jobs incentivized by NAFTA-style trade deals.  It would undermine efforts to change the unfair trade and other policies that have led to such decline.  

To boost U.S. manufacturing jobs and production, we need to switch our policies, not our numbers.

The ECPC is accepting comments on their “factoryless goods” proposal until July 21.  If you’d care to offer your thoughts, click here.
  

The 3 Big Distortions of the "Factoryless Goods" Proposal
  

1.  The proposal would result in a fabricated reduction of the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit by rebranding imports of U.S. manufactured goods as “services” imports, according to recent explanations offered by officials of ECPC member agencies.  The redefinition would not affect all U.S. trade statistics, but it would distort some of the most widely-reported numbers (those calculated on a balance of payments basis), misleading the public and policymakers alike.

Take, for example, a scenario in which Apple ships iPhone parts to China to be assembled in a Foxconn factory and then sent back to the United States to be sold here.  Currently, the value of the imported iPhone minus the lesser value of the exported parts counts as a net U.S. import of a manufactured good.  This reflects the fact that Apple offshored its iPhone manufacturing to China.

But under the ECPC proposal, Foxconn, now called a “manufacturing services provider,” would not be described as having manufactured the iPhones but as having provided services to Apple.  As a result, the net U.S. import of manufactured goods resulting from Apple’s decision to offshore would be reduced. In its place would be an import of Foxconn’s factory “services.”
  

2.  The proposal would treat some goods exported by foreign factories as U.S. manufactured exports.  Take a scenario in which Apple ships iPhone parts to China that are assembled by Foxconn and then shipped to the European Union (EU).  Currently, Apple’s export of parts to China counts as the only U.S. export in this scenario. 

But the ECPC proposal, according to officials of ECPC member agencies, would instead count China’s export of the fully-assembled iPhones to the EU, less the cost of any imported parts, as a “U.S. manufactured goods export.”

The absurd logic of this rebranding is that while China manufactured and exported the iPhones, they count as U.S. manufactured exports because they were under the control of a U.S. brand.  This Orwellian proposal would spell an artificial increase in U.S. manufactured exports (on a balance of payments basis), further belying the real U.S. manufacturing trade deficit.
  

 3.  The proposal would spur a disingenuous, overnight increase in the number of U.S. “manufacturing” jobs as white-collar employees in firms like Apple – now rebranded as “factoryless goods producers” – would suddenly be counted as “manufacturing” workers. 

This change would also create a false increase in manufacturing wages, as many of the newly-counted “manufacturing” jobs would be designers, programmers and brand managers at “factoryless goods producers” like Apple. 

Reported U.S. manufacturing output would also abruptly and errantly jump, as revenues from firms like Apple would be lumped in with the output of actual manufacturers. 
  

This proposal defies common sense.  It would dramatically distort U.S. trade, labor and gross domestic product statistics.  Goods manufactured abroad and imported into the United States are not something other than manufactured goods imports.  Goods exported from foreign factories do not become “U.S. exports” when they are produced for U.S. brands.  And jobs in which workers spend zero time actually manufacturing anything are not “manufacturing jobs.”  

The offshoring of U.S. manufacturing under years of unfair trade policies cannot be undone with a data trick.  The hoped-for “renaissance” of U.S. manufacturing will come through new policymaking informed by accurate data, not politically convenient distortions.  

Corporate America’s Mysterious Affinity for the Number 700,000

The Chamber is at it again.  As negotiations drag and support flags for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has come up with a new number to sell the controversial deal to a skeptical Congress and U.S. public: 700,000. 

That’s the number of U.S. jobs that the corporate alliance claims could be created by the sweeping pact opposed by a diverse array of members of Congress, small businesses, and labor organizations for its threats to, well, U.S. jobs. 

How did the Chamber get this number?  They don’t say. 

The Chamber blog post proclaiming the six-digit figure simply says it is “based on the methodology and outcomes” of a Peterson Institute study that used outsized assumptions to produce miniscule projections for the TPP’s economic impact.  Under the most optimistic scenario the authors could envision, the study projected a 0.13 percent increase in U.S. GDP under the deal –- a fraction of the estimated GDP contribution of the latest version of the iPhone. 

But the Peterson Institute study did not project what this tiny economic impact would mean for jobs.  It is unclear how the Chamber pulled a jobs number from a study that did not produce a jobs number. 

We called them to ask.  We were told that no one was there who could answer our question.  Multiple calls and emails later, and we still have no response from the Chamber to solve the mystery of the unsubstantiated statistic.

Here’s one theory on the steps the Chamber took to derive its estimate of the TPP’s prospective impact:

1. Copy
2. Paste

This is not the first time the Chamber has used the number 700,000. Indeed, the Chamber appears to have an uncanny affinity for the number when pushing a retrograde, anti-worker agenda. 

When some states raised their minimum wage laws and increased workers’ benefits after the Great Recession, the Chamber commissioned a study finding that such labor laws had cost U.S. jobs.  How many?  700,000. 

When the Obama administration proposed a tax increase on the wealthy in 2012, the Chamber commissioned a study finding that the proposal would eliminate U.S. jobs…700,000 jobs, to be precise. 

Perhaps it should not come as a surprise that the Chamber is using its lucky number once again to push a regressive deal like the TPP. 

But hey, if the copy/paste method works…

Maybe we should take a cue from the Chamber and start using whatever numbers we have lying around.  Let’s see…how many U.S. jobs have been lost under NAFTA to Mexico alone?  Well I’ll be -– the answer is 700,000. 

Borrowing a card from the Chamber, we hereby project that the TPP will cost U.S. workers 700,000 jobs. 

Okay, obviously it would be ridiculous to pull such projections out of thin air.  And let’s hope that’s not what the Chamber is doing to arrive at its unsubstantiated claim. 

But without an explanation from the Chamber, we are left to speculate.  Maybe they somehow converted Peterson’s miniscule projected GDP gain projection into a much larger jobs gain, errantly ignoring the impact of TPP-spurred inequality.  (The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the likely increase in inequality resulting from the TPP would swamp the small gains projected by the Peterson Institute, spelling a pay cut for 90 percent of U.S. workers.)  

Or maybe the Chamber extrapolated a jobs figure from the study’s export calculations, errantly ignoring the impact of TPP-spurred imports.  (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 existing U.S. pacts.) 

In the end, we don’t know how the corporate alliance generated the mystery number behind its TPP cheerleading.  Until we see some evidence, we’re going to take the Chamber’s statistic with about 700,000 grains of salt.  

Release of Two Years of Korea FTA Data Throws More Cold Water on Obama TPP and Fast Track Efforts After Asia Trip Fails to Change Dynamic

U.S. Exports to Korea Down 5 Percent, Imports from Korea Up and Trade Deficit With Korea Swells 50 Percent, Contradicting Obama Claims of U.S. Export and Job Growth

The just-released official  U.S. government trade data covering the first two years of the U.S.-Korea “free trade” agreement (FTA) further chills the prospects for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Fast Track trade authority. Today’s release of the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) data likely will intensify congressional antipathy toward Fast Track and concerns about the TPP. The USITC data, corrected to remove re-exports not produced in the United States, show falling U.S. exports to Korea and a ballooning U.S. trade deficit under the Korea FTA, which served as the U.S. template for the TPP.

U.S. goods exports to Korea have dropped 5 percent  under the Korea FTA’s first two years, compared to the two years before FTA implementation, in contrast to the Obama administration’s promise that the Korea FTA would mean “more exports, more jobs” and recent claims that the agreement has shown “strong results.” Imports into the United States from Korea have climbed 8 percent under the FTA (an increase of $4.7 billion per year).

From the year before the FTA took effect to its second year of implementation, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea swelled 50 percent (a $7.6 billion increase). In 23 out of 24 months since the Korea FTA took effect, the U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly level seen in the two years before the deal. The trade deficit increase under the FTA indicates the loss of more than 50,000 U.S. jobs, according the trade-jobs ratio that the Obama administration used to project gains from the deal. 

“The fact that the Korea deal has resulted in a worse trade deficit and more lost jobs has had a very chilling effect on public and congressional support for the TPP and Fast Track, and the Obama administration’s dishonest claims that the pact has expanded exports has only hardened that opposition,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “While most Democrats and a sizeable bloc of Republicans in Congress have already voiced opposition to Fast Tracking the TPP, both the negative outcomes of the Korea FTA and the administration’s dishonest claim that the pact is a success are adding more converts daily.” 

Rather than acknowledge that the Korea pact has resulted in declining U.S. exports and a larger trade deficit, the administration’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has relied on data omissions and distortions in press materials that attempt to paint failure as success. For a full response to the USTR’s litany of data errors, visit http://www.citizen.org/documents/Korea-FTA-USTR-data-debunk.pdf. 

The USTR’s biggest distortion is counting foreign-made products that are simply shipped through the United States en route to Korea as “U.S. exports” to Korea. Rather than use the official U.S. government trade data provided by the USITC that counts only U.S.-made exports, USTR cites data that treat the 14 percent rise in foreign-made exports to Korea under the FTA as a boost to U.S. exports, artificially diminishing the dramatic U.S. export downfall.

The USTR relies on a series of other data errors in attempt to hide the dismal Korea FTA record, including:

• Failing to account for inflation: By treating a rise in prices as a rise in exports, the USTR mistakenly claims that the observed decrease in U.S. exports to Korea in manufactured goods under the FTA is an increase.

• Ignoring aggregate losses to cherry-pick tiny winning sectors: TheUSTR does not mention the overall 34 percent downfall in U.S. agricultural exports to Korea under the FTA’s first two years. Instead, the USTR boasts export increases in products like fruit and wine. The combined annual export gains in fruit and wine amount to $69 million, less than 6 percent of the more than $1.2 billion aggregate annual export loss in agricultural products.

• Using a selective timeframe: The USTR’s assessment of the Korea FTA record ignores 12 months of available data under the FTA and fails to include in the pre-FTA baseline of comparison the three months of data immediately prior to the deal’s implementation. This selective timeframe, combined with the decision to incorporate foreign-made exports, allows the USTR to claim that the U.S. export downfall under the FTA is entirely because of diminished exports in corn and fossil fuels. But even after discounting both corn and fossil fuels, the full set of data shows that U.S. exports to Korea have still fallen under the FTA, and the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has still ballooned.

“The USTR’s resort to major data deceptions to try to play down the debacle of the Korea FTA indicates just how desperate the administration is to shake the mounting evidence that the FTA model it now seeks to expand with the TPP costs U.S. jobs,” said Wallach. “But using data tricks to try to cover up the failure of the largest Obama trade deal, like treating foreign-made products as U.S. exports, is likely to backfire, and members of Congress do not take kindly to deception.”

The decline in U.S. exports to Korea under the FTA’s first two years was broad-based; of the 15 U.S. sectors that export the most to Korea, nine of them have experienced export declines under the FTA. Export shifts under the FTA have been larger for losing sectors than for winning sectors. Of the 15 top export sectors, eight have seen declines in exports to Korea of greater than 5 percent while only three have seen growth of exports to Korea of greater than 5 percent.

Many of the sectors that the administration promised would be the biggest beneficiaries of the FTA have been among the largest losers, including U.S. meat producers. U.S. poultry exports to Korea have plummeted 31 percent under the FTA, while U.S. beef and pork exports have fallen 10 and 19 percent respectively. 

The U.S. automotive industry, another promised winner under the deal, has endured a surge in automotive imports from Korea that has swamped a marginal increase in U.S. automotive exports to Korea since the FTA took effect. While U.S. average annual automotive exports to Korea under the pact have been $294 million higher than before the deal, average annual automotive imports from Korea have soared by $4.9 billion under the deal, spurring a 32 percent increase in the U.S. automotive trade deficit with Korea.

Overall, U.S. export growth to countries with pacts like the Korea FTA has been particularly lackluster. Growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to FTA partners by 30 percent over the past decade.

For further analysis of the outcomes of the Korea FTA’s first two years, visit http://www.citizen.org/documents/Korea-FTA-USTR-data-debunk.pdf.  

Corporate Group Launches “Fact-Based” Trade Series, Avoids Facts

When launching a new series of materials touted as “fact-based analysis,” it is unwise to begin with a distortion of the facts.  But that’s the inauspicious move taken today by the Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT), a corporate alliance that has launched a new “Trade Notes” series with some confused data on the record of U.S. trade under “free trade” agreements (FTAs).  

Official government data show that U.S. trade deficits have ballooned with FTA partners while actually diminishing with the rest of the world.  As we reported recently, the aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners has increased by more than $147 billion, or 443%, since the FTAs were implemented.  In contrast, the aggregate deficit with all non-FTA countries (even including China) has decreased by more than $130 billion, or 16%, since 2006 (the median entry date of existing FTAs). 

Two factors explain this proclivity toward trade deficits with FTA partner countries.  First, imports from those countries have spiked – an unsurprising result of a trade model that has incentivized offshoring and pitted U.S. workers against their lower-wage counterparts abroad.  Second, and perhaps more surprising, is that U.S. export growth to FTA partner countries, despite all promises to the contrary, has been slower than to non-FTA countries. Indeed, 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.

But that isn’t the takeaway from ECAT’s Trade Notes debut today.  In response to “some commentators [who] have argued that trade agreements drive growth in U.S. trade deficits,” ECAT asserts, “recent data suggest that trade agreements, on the whole, actually help to improve U.S. trade balances with FTA partner countries.” 

How can ECAT make this claim?  First, they take oil and gas out of the trade data. Echoing the refrain of many FTA proponents that burgeoning FTA deficits are just about oil imports, ECAT displays a chart that appears to show aggregate non-oil trade deficits with FTA partners diminishing and then turning into surpluses over the last decade.

But the official government data beg to differ.  Even if we remove oil and gas, the non-oil U.S. goods trade balance last year with all U.S. FTA partners was a $100 billion deficit, not a surplus. And while ECAT claims that the non-oil trade balance with FTA countries has been improving, the non-oil U.S. trade deficit with these 20 countries was larger last year than in any of the last six years. 

What, then, explains the gulf between the data and ECAT’s claim of a growing non-oil surplus with FTA countries?  The primary explanation is that ECAT – like the U.S. Trade Representative and fellow corporate conglomerates such as the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Business Roundtable, etc. – has decided to count foreign-made exports as U.S. exports.  As we’ve explained time and again, determining FTAs’ impacts on U.S. jobs requires counting only U.S.-made exports.  Instead, ECAT also counts “re-exports” – goods made abroad that are shipped through the United States en route to a final destination.  As re-exports to FTA partner countries have been steadily increasing, counting them in trade data – as ECAT does – has had an increasingly distortionary effect on the true record of FTAs (e.g. you can make the NAFTA deficit look half as big simply by counting foreign-made re-exports as U.S. exports). 

In announcing today’s new Trade Note series, ECAT President Calman Cohen stated, “ECAT member companies recognize the importance of maintaining a fact-based dialogue on the contribution of trade and investment to our national economic interest.  ECAT seeks to make a constructive contribution to that dialogue through its new Trade Notes series.”

We’re all for contributions to fact-based dialogue.  Let’s hope we start seeing some from ECAT.  

Data Debunk for USTR Froman’s Thursday Committee Hearing

In recent weeks, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has begun making outlandish claims about past U.S. trade agreements. These claims are not supported by the official  U.S. government trade data. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) recent assertions that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has led to a U.S. trade surplus with Mexico and Canada and that the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has increased U.S. manufacturing exports to Korea have been met with incredulity. These pacts’ recent anniversaries have spotlighted how the trade pact model on which the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is premised has led to massive trade deficits.

The premise that NAFTA would improve our trade balance was the basis for NAFTA proponents’ promises that the pact would create U.S. jobs. Many of the same government and industry sources made the same claims to sell the 2011 U.S.-Korea FTA. These pacts’ dismal outcomes – slow or even negative export growth, rising imports and burgeoning trade deficits – are intensifying congressional opposition to Fast Track authority for the TPP.

Rather than altering the trade agreement model to avoid repeating these outcomes, USTR appears intent on trying to change the data. To generate the outlandish claims about NAFTA and the Korea FTA, USTR employs a smorgasbord of data tricks to look out for in Froman’s testimony Thursday before the House Ways and Means Committee:

USTR’s Biggest Distortion: Counting Foreign-Made “Transshipped” Products as U.S. Exports

USTR’s primary data distortion is the decision not to use the official U.S. government trade data provided by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC).^[i] Instead, USTR cites data that include what are called “re-exports.” These are goods made abroad that are simply shipped through the United States en route to a final destination. (The USTR figures would include as U.S. exports goods taken off a truck from Canada in California’s Port of Long Beach then shipped to their final destination in Korea, or goods shipped from China, unloaded in a California port and trucked to Mexico.) Each month, USITC removes re-exports, which do not support U.S. production jobs, from the raw data gathered by the Census Bureau.^[ii] But USTR uses the uncorrected data, inflating the actual U.S. export figures.

• Using the official USITC data, U.S. export growth to countries with which we do not have FTAs has been 30 percent faster than to our FTA partners over the past decade.^[iii]

• The USITC data show U.S. average monthly goods exports to Korea are down 11 percent, imports from Korea have increased and the U.S. average monthly trade deficit with Korea has swelled 47 percent since the enactment of the Korea FTA.^[iv] 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.^[v]  Using the administration’s current export-to-job ratio, this drop in net exports represents the loss of more than 46,000 U.S. jobs.^[vi] However since the FTA, foreign-made re-exports passing through the United States en route to Korea are up 13 percent on a monthly average basis.^[vii] By counting these foreign goods as U.S. exports, USTR artificially diminishes the dramatic drop in actual U.S. exports to Korea, and errantly claims gains in some sectors.

• Using the USITC data, the 2013 U.S. goods trade balance with NAFTA nations was a deficit of $177 billion. The combined U.S. goods and services deficit with Mexico and Canada rose (in real, inflation-adjusted terms) from $9.7 billion in 1993 to $139.3 billion in 2012 (the year of comparison used by USTR).^[viii] This NAFTA deficit increase of $129.5 billion, or 1,330 percent, represents hundreds of thousands of lost U.S. jobs.^[ix]  But adding re-exports has had an increasingly distortionary effect on the true NAFTA deficit, allowing NAFTA proponents to make the 2013 NAFTA goods deficit of $177 billion look less than half as large. By incorporating re-exports, USTR claims in recent press materials: “U.S. total goods and private services trade balance with Canada countries (sic) shifted from a deficit of $2.9 billion in 1993 to roughly balance in 2012 (surplus of $37 million).” But after removing re-exports and adjusting for inflation, the actual total U.S. goods and services trade deficit with Canada increased from $16.9 billion in 1993 to $49.1 billion in 2012. That’s a deficit increase of $32.2 billion, or 191 percent. Similarly, USTR claims: “U.S. total goods and private services trade balance with Mexico countries shifted from a surplus of $4.6 billion in 1993 to a deficit of $49.4 billion in 2012.” But after removing re-exports and adjusting for inflation, the actual total U.S. goods and services trade deficit with Mexico changed from a $7.2 billion surplus in 1993 to a $90.1 billion deficit in 2012. That’s a $97.3 billion decline in the U.S. goods and services trade balance with Mexico.

We Still Have Big Deficits Without Fossil Fuels (And Corn Doesn’t Explain Korea Export Crash)

Despite USTR’s claim that our NAFTA deficit is all about fuel imports, the share of the U.S. NAFTA goods trade deficit that is comprised of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas has declined under NAFTA, from 77 percent in 1993 to 53 percent in 2013, as we have faced a surge of imported manufactured and agricultural goods.^[x] Even if one removes all of these “oil” categories from the balance, the remaining 2013 NAFTA goods trade deficit was $82.9 billion. The combined NAFTA goods and services deficit in 2012 minus oil was $38.3 billion. 

Similarly, with respect to the Korea FTA, USTR claims“[O]ur 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.”^[xi] But even 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.^[xii] USTR claims that corn and fossil fuels explain the entirety of the export downfall largely by using an ill-suited 2011 versus 2013 timeframe that omits 10 months of available data and relies on a less relevant pre-FTA baseline. Usage of this less accurate timeframe produces a greater drop in corn and fossil fuel exports, and a smaller decline in exports of all other goods, than has actually occurred under the FTA when comparing the year immediately preceding the FTA with the full set of available post-FTA data. 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.^[xiii] 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.

Not Adjusting for Inflation Counts Increased Prices as an Increase in U.S. Exports

USTR also inflates U.S. exports to Korea by failing to adjust for price inflation. For instance, in its recent Korea FTA news release, USTR claims: “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.”^[xiv] Simply adjusting for inflation alone completely erases USTR’s claim of growth in exports of U.S. manufactured goods to Korea under the FTA. That is, even if one includes the distortion of re-exports and uses USTR’s timeframe, U.S. exports to Korea of manufactured goods fell slightly under the FTA after properly accounting for price increases.^[xv] If one removes the re-exports (i.e., uses the official USITC data) and looks at the actual months that the FTA has been in effect, 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 goods 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.^[xvi]

Cherry-Picking Small-Dollar Winning Sectors, Omitting Major Losers to Distract from Net Losses

In its Korea FTA press release, USTR claims: “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.”^[xvii] But the losses in U.S. meat exports to Korea under the pact alone nearly cancel out the combined export gains for all agricultural sectors that USTR touts as winners (a monthly average loss of $20.1 million in meat exports versus a combined $24.7 million monthly average gain in exports of dairy, wine, beer, soybean oil, fruits and nuts).^[xviii]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. Ignoring this overall result, USTR singles out fruit as a winning agricultural sector under the FTA. But U.S. monthly average exports to Korea of all fruits have increased by just $312,120 under the FTA. This 1 percent increase could hardly be described as “dramatic.” USTR also highlights wine, but U.S. monthly average exports of wine to Korea have increased by just $370,378 under the FTA.^[xix] The amount of wine sold in an average six minutes in the United States is worth more ($402,415) than the gain in U.S. wine exports to Korea in an average month under the Korea FTA.^[xx]

Such paltry gains pale in comparison to the more than $20 million lost on average under each month of the FTA in U.S. exports to Korea of meat – one of the sectors that the administration promised would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the Korea deal.^[xxi] 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.^[xxii]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.^[xxiii]

Omissions and Data Tricks to Hide Massive Auto Sector Deficit Growth Under the Korea FTA

The USTR data on U.S. automotive trade with Korea under the FTA is based on a series of tricks. USTR claims: “Since the Korea agreement went into effect, U.S. exports to Korea are up for our manufactured goods, including autos … overall U.S. passenger vehicle exports to Korea increased 80 percent compared to 2011, and sales of ‘Detroit 3’ vehicles are up 40 percent.”^[xxiv] In fact, exports to Korea of U.S.-produced Fords, Chryslers and General Motors vehicles increased by just 3,400 vehicles from 2011 to 2013.^[xxv]  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.^[xxvi]

And USTR’s claim of an “80 percent” rise in passenger vehicle exports, in addition to being inflated by increases in re-exports and prices, omits the export of auto parts, which constitute the majority of the value of U.S. automotive exports to Korea. U.S. average monthly exports of auto parts to Korea have fallen 12 percent under the FTA, offsetting much of the rise in passenger vehicle exports.^[xxvii] After including auto parts, excluding foreign-made re-exports, using the more FTA-relevant timeframe and adjusting for inflation, U.S. average monthly automotive exports to Korea have increased by only 12 percent under the FTA, while average monthly automotive imports from Korea have risen by 19 percent.

The disparity is even starker in dollar terms: 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. 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.^[xxviii]

Using a Selective Time Frame to Measure the Outcomes of the Korea FTA

Rather than compare the post-Korea-FTA period to the 12 months prior to the FTA’s implementation (i.e., April 2011 through March 2012), USTR uses calendar year 2011 as a baseline. This means that USTR omits data from the three months immediately prior to the FTA’s 2012 implementation (January through March 2012) and replaces it with data from the same three months in 2011. This difference matters, since U.S. exports to Korea in the first three months of 2011 were 9 percent lower than in the first three months of 2012, giving USTR a lower baseline of comparison that makes the downfall in U.S. exports look less severe than if using the three most recent pre-FTA months.^[xxix] In addition, USTR uses only calendar year 2013 to assess the FTA’s record, omitting 10 months of available post-FTA data (April through December 2012 and January 2014). While a comparison between 2011 and 2013 could serve as a second-best approximation in the absence of more precise data, the more FTA-relevant monthly data is readily available.

 

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[i] USITC data can be found at U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb.” Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[ii] Census Bureau data can be found at U.S. Census Bureau, “U.S. International Trade Data,” U.S. Department of Commerce. Available at: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/data/.

[iii] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed February 11, 2014. Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/. The statistic is a comparison of the average annual growth rate of the combined inflation-adjusted exports of all non-FTA partner countries versus that of all FTA partner countries from 2004 through 2013 (adjustments have been made to account for the changes in these two categories as  non-FTA partners have become FTA partners). All data in this memo is inflation-adjusted according to the CPI-U-RS index of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (which provides indices up through 2012) and the online inflation calculator of the U.S. Bureau of Labor of Statistics (which provides an approximate index for 2013). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Consumer Price Index Research Series Using Current Methods (CPI-U-RS),” U.S. Department of Labor, updated March 29, 2013. Available at: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiursai1978_2012.pdf.  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “CPI Inflation Calculator,” U.S. Department of Labor, accessed March 10, 2014. Available at: http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

[iv] In this paragraph and throughout, figures concerning average monthly trade levels with Korea compare data from the year before the FTA’s implementation and from the 22 post-implementation months for which data are available. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[v] The projection for export losses under the FTA’s first two years assumes that trends during the FTA’s first 22 months continue for the remaining two months for which data are not yet available. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[vi] Michael Froman, “2014 Trade Policy Agenda and 2013 Annual Report of the President of the United States on the Trade Agreements Program,” Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, March 2014, at 2. Available at: http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2014%20Trade%20Policy%20Agenda%20and%202013%20Annual%20Report.pdf.    

[vii] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[viii] Goods trade data in this bullet point come from U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade Dataweb,” accessed February 20, 2014. Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov. Services trade data in this bullet point come from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “International Data: Table 12: U.S. International Transactions, by Area,” accessed February 20, 2014. Available at: http://www.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=6&step=1#reqid=6&step=1&isuri=1.

[ix] See Robert Scott, “Heading South: U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA,” Economic Policy Institute, May 3, 2011. Available at: http://www.epi.org/publication/heading_south_u-s-mexico_trade_and_job_displacement_after_nafta1/.

[x] Trade in petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas is defined as NAICS 2111 and 3241 for data since 1997 – when NAICS replaced the SIC classification system – and SIC 131, 291, 295, and 299 for data before 1997.

[xi] Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement Shows Strong Results on Second Anniversary,” USTR press release, March 12, 2014. Available at: http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-Korea-Free-Trade-Agreement-Shows-Strong-Results-on-Second-Anniversary.

[xii] Corn is defined as NAICS 111150 and fossil fuels are defined as NAICS 211111, 211112, 212112 and 212113. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xiii] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xiv] Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement Shows Strong Results on Second Anniversary,” USTR press release, March 12, 2014. Available at: http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-Korea-Free-Trade-Agreement-Shows-Strong-Results-on-Second-Anniversary.

[xv] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xvi] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xvii] Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement Shows Strong Results on Second Anniversary,” USTR press release, March 12, 2014. Available at: http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-Korea-Free-Trade-Agreement-Shows-Strong-Results-on-Second-Anniversary.

[xviii] “Meat” includes beef (defined as SITC 011), pork (defined as SITC 0122, 0161 and 0175) and poultry (defined as SITC 0123 and 0174). Dairy is defined as NAICS 2111511, 311512, 311513, 311514 and 311520. Wine is defined as NAICS 312130. Beer is defined as NAICS 312120. Soybean oil is defined as NAICS 311222 and 311224. Fruits are defined as NAICS 11310, 11320, 111331, 111332, 111333, 111334 and 111339. Nuts are defined as NAICS 111335 and 111992. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 21, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xix] Fruits are defined as NAICS 11310, 11320, 111331, 111332, 111333, 111334 and 111339. Wine is defined as NAICS 312130. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xx] The statistic is based on an estimated $34.6 billion in wine sales in the United States in 2012, adjusted for inflation. The Wine Institute, “2012 California and U.S. Wine Sales,” 2013, accessed March 21, 2014. Available at: https://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/statistics/article697.

[xxi] “Meat” includes beef (defined as SITC 011), pork (defined as SITC 0122, 0161 and 0175) and poultry (defined as SITC 0123 and 0174). Dairy is defined as NAICS 2111511, 311512, 311513, 311514 and 311520. Wine is defined as NAICS 312130. Beer is defined as NAICS 312120. Soybean oil is defined as NAICS 311222 and 311224. Fruits are defined as NAICS 11310, 11320, 111331, 111332, 111333, 111334 and 111339. Nuts are defined as NAICS 111335 and 111992. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 21, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xxii] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xxiii] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xxiv] Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement Shows Strong Results on Second Anniversary,” USTR press release, March 12, 2014. Available at: http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-Korea-Free-Trade-Agreement-Shows-Strong-Results-on-Second-Anniversary.

[xxv] Korea Automobile Importers & Distributors Association, “New Registration,” 2014, accessed March 10, 2014. Available at: http://www.kaida.co.kr/en/statistics/NewRegistList.do.

[xxvi] Timothy Cain, “Hyundai-Kia Sales Figures,” GoodCarBadCar.net, 2014, accessed March 10, 2014. Available at: http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2012/10/hyundai-kia-group-sales-figures.html.

[xxvii] Passenger vehicles are defined as code 300 and 301 in the one-digit End Use classification system, while auto parts are defined as 302. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xxviii] Total automotive exports and imports are defined as code 3 in the one-digit End Use classification system. U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

[xxix] U.S. International Trade Commission, “Interactive Tariff and Trade DataWeb,” accessed March 10, 2014.  Available at: http://dataweb.usitc.gov/.

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.

Fact-checking Froman: The Top 10 Myths Used by Obama’s Top Trade Official

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman tried in a speech yesterday to defend the Obama administration’s beleaguered trade policy agenda: the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) pacts and an unpopular push to Fast Track those sweeping deals through Congress.  The list of those publicly opposing the Fast Track push includes most House Democrats, a sizeable bloc of House Republicans, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and 62% of the U.S. voting public. 

In attempt to justify the administration’s polemical pacts, Froman resorted to some statements of dubious veracity, ranging from half-truths to outright mistruths.  To set the record straight, here are the top 10 Froman fables, followed by inconvenient facts that undercut his assertions and help explain the widespread opposition to TPP, TAFTA, and Fast Track.

1. Access to affordable medicines

• Froman:  “[In TPP] we’re working to find better ways to foster affordable access to medicines…” 

• Fact:  This is one of the bigger whoppers to escape Froman’s mouth during the speech.  Leaked negotiating texts reveal that U.S. proposals for the TPP go beyond prior U.S. pacts in handing large pharmaceutical corporations unprecedented monopoly patent protections that would restrict the availability of life-saving generic medicines and raise healthcare costs in TPP countries.  The U.S. TPP proposals would empower pharmaceutical firms to extend medicine patents beyond what the World Trade Organization allows, to patent even the methods for treating patients, and to re-patent existing medicines without actually inventing anything new.  A broad array of public health groups have condemned the overreaching U.S. TPP proposals, warning that they would “jeopardize many, if not millions, of lives.” 

2. Income inequality

• Froman:  “Our trade policy is a major lever for encouraging investment here at home in manufacturing, agriculture and services, creating more high-paying jobs and combating wage stagnation and income inequality.”

• Fact:  First, study after study has shown no correlation between a country’s willingness to sign on to TPP-style pacts and its ability to attract foreign investment, casting doubt on Froman’s promise of a job-creating investment influx.  But more importantly, Froman opted to ignore a big part of why U.S. workers are currently enduring such acute levels of “wage stagnation and income inequality.”  He did not mention the academic consensus that status quo U.S. trade policy, which the TPP would expand, has contributed significantly to the historic rise in U.S. income inequality.  The only debate has been the extent of trade’s inequality-exacerbating impact.  A recent study estimates that trade flows have been responsible for more than 90% of the rise in income inequality occurring since 1995, a period characterized by trade pacts that have incentivized the offshoring of decently-paid U.S. jobs and forced U.S. workers to compete with poorly-paid workers abroad.  How can the TPP, a proposed expansion of the trade policies that have exacerbated inequality, now be expected to ameliorate inequality? 

3. Internet freedom

• Froman:  “I’ve heard some critics suggest that TPP is in some way related to SOPA [the Stop Online Piracy Act].  Don’t believe it.  It just isn’t true….”

• Fact:  Froman’s attempt to assuage fears of a TPP-provided backdoor to SOPA-like limits on Internet freedom would be more convincing if a) he offered details beyond “it just isn’t true,” or b) if his statement didn’t directly contradict leaked TPP texts.  A November leak of the draft TPP intellectual property chapter revealed, for example, that the U.S. is proposing draconian copyright liability rules for Internet service providers that, like SOPA, threaten to curtail Internet users’ free speech.  Indeed, while nearly all other TPP countries have agreed to a proposed provision to limit Internet service providers’ liability, the United States is one of two countries to oppose such flexibility.

4. Corporate trade advisors

• Froman:  “Our cleared advisors do include representatives from the private sector… [but] they [also] include representatives from every major labor union, public health groups…environmental groups…as well as development NGOs...” 

• Fact:  About 90% of the members of the official U.S. trade advisory system explicitly represent industry interests.  These “advisors” are granted privileged access to U.S. negotiators and secretive trade negotiating texts.  Less than 9% of the advisors represent the union, public health, consumer, or development organizations that Froman touts.  And most of those non-industry representatives are cloistered into just two of the advisory system’s 28 committees, while 16 of the committees have zero non-business representatives.  These industry-only committees meet with administration representatives three times as often as the system’s single labor committee, as highlighted by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in a recent letter criticizing the lack of TPP consultation with union representatives who ostensibly serve as “advisors.”  

• Froman:  “I’m pleased to announce that we are upgrading our advisory system to provide a new forum for experts on issues like public health, development and consumer safety.  A new Public Interest Trade Advisory Committee, or PTAC, will join the Labor Advisory Committee and the Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committees to provide cross-cutting platforms for input in the negotiations.”

• Fact:  Froman’s announcement of a new “public interest” committee – a response to the outcry over the vast imbalance of this corporate-dominated advisory system – offers too little, too late. Amid a slew of advisory committees exclusively devoted to narrow industry interests, the “public interest” now gets a single committee?  And how much influence will this committee have in changing the many core TPP provisions that threaten the public interest, now that the administration hopes to conclude TPP negotiations, which have been going on for four years, in the coming months?  Proposed as a TPP afterthought, this new committee comes across as window-dressing, not a genuine restructuring of a system that gives corporations insider access to an otherwise closed trade negotiation process.

5. Fast Track

• Froman:  Fast Track is “the mechanism by which Congress has worked with every administration since 1974 to define its marching orders on what to negotiate…”  We can use Fast Track to “require[] future administrations to require labor, environmental and innovation and access to medicines [standards]…”

• Fact:  Under Fast Track, Congress has not given the administration “marching orders” so much as marching suggestions.  Though Congress inserted non-binding “negotiating objectives” for U.S. pacts into past Fast Track bills – a model replicated in the unpopular current legislation to revive Fast Track for the TPP and TAFTA – Democratic and GOP presidents alike have historically ignored negotiating objectives included in Fast Track.  For example, Froman stated that Fast Track could be used to require particular labor standards.  But while the 1988 Fast Track used for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) included a negotiating objective on labor standards, neither pact included such terms.  The history shows that Fast-Tracked pacts that ignore Congress’ priorities can still be signed by the president (locking in the agreements’ contents) before being sent to Congress for an expedited, ex-post vote in which amendments are prohibited and debate is restricted. 

6. Currency manipulation

• Froman:  In response to a question of whether currency manipulation is being addressed in the TPP: “We take the issue of exchange rates or currency manipulation very seriously as a matter of policy…”

• Fact:  U.S. TPP negotiators have not even initiated negotiations on the inclusion of binding disciplines on currency manipulation, much less secured other countries’ commitment to those disciplines.  The U.S. inaction on currency in the TPP contrasts with letters signed by 230 Representatives (a majority) and 60 Senators (a supermajority) demanding the inclusion of currency manipulation disciplines in the TPP.  Unless U.S. negotiators take currency manipulation more “seriously,” the TPP may be dead on arrival in the U.S. Congress. 

7. Labor rights

• Froman:  “In TPP we’re seeking to include disciplines requiring adherence to fundamental labor rights, including the right to organize and to collectively bargain, protections from child and forced labor and employment discrimination.” 

• Fact:  The TPP includes Vietnam, a country that bans independent unions.  And Vietnam was recently red-listed by the Department of Labor as one of just four countries that use both child labor and forced labor in apparel production.  While Froman acknowledged such “serious challenges,” he did not explain how they would be resolved.  Is Vietnam going to change its fundamental labor laws so as to allow independent unions?  Is the government going to revamp its enforcement mechanisms so as to eliminate the country’s widespread child and forced labor?  Barring such sweeping changes, will the U.S. still sign on to a TPP that includes Vietnam?  

8. Environmental protection

• Froman:  “We’re asking our trading partners to commit to effectively enforce environmental laws…”

• Fact:  While Froman touted several provisions in the draft TPP environment chapter as requiring enforcement of domestic environmental laws, he didn’t mention the draft TPP investment chapter that would empower foreign corporations to directly challenge those laws before international tribunals if they felt the laws undermined their expected future profits.  Corporations have been increasingly using these extreme “investor-state” provisions under existing U.S. “free trade” agreements (FTAs) to attack domestic environmental policies, including a moratorium on fracking, renewable energy programs, and requirements to clean up oil pollution and industrial toxins.  Tribunals comprised of three private attorneys have already ordered taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions to foreign firms for such safeguards, arguing that they violate sweeping FTA-granted investor privileges.  Froman’s call for countries to enforce their environmental laws sounds hollow under a TPP that would simultaneously empower corporations to “sue” countries for said enforcement.

9. TPP secrecy

• Froman:  “Let me make one thing absolutely clear: any member of Congress can see the negotiating text anytime they request it.”

• Fact:  For three full years negotiations, members of Congress were not able to see the bracketed negotiating text of the TPP, a deal that would rewrite broad swaths of domestic U.S. policies.  Only after mounting outcry among members of Congress and the public about this astounding degree of secrecy did the administration begin sharing the negotiating text with members of Congress last June.  Even so, the administration still only provides TPP text access under restrictive terms for many members of Congress, such as requiring that technical staff not be present and forbidding the member of Congress from taking detailed notes or keeping a copy of the text.  Meanwhile, the U.S. public remains shut out, with the Obama administration refusing to make public any part of the TPP negotiating text.  Such secrecy falls short of the standard of transparency exhibited by the Bush administration, which published online the full negotiating text of the last similarly sweeping U.S. pact (the Free Trade Area of the Americas). 

10. Exports under FTAs

• Froman:  “Under President Obama, U.S. exports have increased by 50%...”  “Today the post-crisis surge in exports we experienced over the last few years is beginning to recede.  And that’s why we’re working to open markets in the Asia-Pacific and in Europe...”

• Fact:  U.S. exports grew by a grand total of 0% last year under the current “trade” pact model.   The year before that, they grew by 2%.  Most of the export growth Froman cites came early in Obama’s tenure as a predictable rebound from the global recession that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.  At the abysmal export growth rate seen since then, we will not reach Obama’s stated goal to double 2009’s exports until 2054, 40 years behind schedule.  Froman ironically uses this export growth drop-off to argue for more-of-the-same trade policy (e.g. the TPP and TAFTA).  The data simply does not support the oft-parroted pitch that we need TPP-style FTAs to boost exports.  Indeed, 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.  That’s not a solid basis from which to argue, in the name of exports, for yet another FTA. 

Obama Mexico Visit Spotlights 20-Year Legacy of Job Loss from NAFTA, the Pact on Which Obama’s TPP Is Modeled

New Public Citizen Report Catalogs the Negative NAFTA Outcomes That Are Fueling Opposition to Obama Push to Fast Track TPP

The 20-year record of job loss and trade deficits from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is haunting President Barack Obama’s efforts to obtain special trade authority to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), said Public Citizen as it released a new report that comprehensively documents NAFTA’s outcomes. Next week’s presidential trip to Mexico for a long-scheduled “Three Amigos” U.S.-Mexico-Canada summit will raise public attention to NAFTA, on which the TPP is modeled, which is not good news for Obama’s push for the TPP and Fast Track.

Numerous polls show that opposition to NAFTA is among few issues that unite Americans across partisan and regional divides. Public ire about NAFTA’s legacy of job loss and policymakers’ concerns about two decades of huge NAFTA trade deficits have plagued the administration’s efforts to obtain Fast Track trade authority for the TPP. The TPP would expand the NAFTA model to more nations, including ultra-low-wage Vietnam. In the U.S. House of Representatives, most Democrats and a bloc of GOP have indicated opposition to Fast Track, as has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Public Citizen’s new report, "NAFTA’s 20-Year Legacy and the Fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership", compiles government data on NAFTA outcomes to detail the empirical record underlying the public and policymaker sentiment. It also shows that warnings issued by NAFTA boosters that a failure to pass NAFTA would result in foreign policy crises – rising Mexican migration and a neighboring nation devolving into a troubled narco-state – actually came to fruition in part because of NAFTA provisions that destroyed millions of rural Mexican livelihoods.

“Outside of corporate boardrooms and D.C. think tanks, Americans view NAFTA as a symbol of job loss and a cancer on the middle class,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “If you are a president battling to overcome bipartisan congressional skepticism about giving you special trade authority to fast track a massive 12-nation NAFTA expansion, it is really not helpful to be visiting Mexico for a summit of NAFTA-nation leaders.”

The Public Citizen report shows that not only did projections and promises made by NAFTA proponents not materialize, but many results are exactly the opposite. Such outcomes include a staggering $177 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada, one million net U.S. jobs lost in NAFTA’s first decade alone, slower U.S. manufacturing and services export growth to Mexico and Canada, a doubling of immigration from Mexico, larger agricultural trade deficits with Mexico and Canada, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.

“The data have disproved the promises of more jobs and better wages, so bizarrely now NAFTA defenders argue the pact was a success because it expanded the volume of U.S. trade with the two countries without mentioning that this resulted in a 556 percent increase in our trade deficit with those countries, with a flood of new NAFTA imports wiping out hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” said Wallach.

The study tracks specific promises made by U.S. corporations like Chrysler, GE and Caterpillar to create specific numbers of American jobs if NAFTA was approved, and reveals government data showing that instead, they fired U.S. workers and moved operations to Mexico.

“The White House and the corporate lobby sold NAFTA with promises of export growth and job creation, but the actual data show the projections were at best wrong,” said Wallach. “The gulf between the gains promised for NAFTA and the damage that ensued means that the public and policymakers are not buying the same sales pitch now being made for theTPP and Fast Track.”

The report also documents how post-NAFTA trade and investment trends have contributed to middle-class pay cuts, which in turn contributed to growing income inequality; how since NAFTA, U.S. trade deficit growth with Mexico and Canada has been 50 percent higher than with countries not party to a U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and how U.S. manufacturing and services exports to Canada and Mexico have grown at less than half the pre-NAFTA rate.

Among the study’s findings:

• Rather than creating in any year the 200,000 net jobs per year promised by former President Bill Clinton on the basis of Peterson Institute for International Economics projections, job loss from NAFTA began rapidly:

• American manufacturing jobs were lost as U.S. firms used NAFTA’s foreign investor privileges to relocate production to Mexico, and as a new flood of NAFTA imports swamped gains in exports, creating a massive new trade deficit that equated to an estimated net loss of one million U.S. jobs by 2004. A small pre-NAFTA U.S. trade surplus of $2.5 billion with Mexico turned into a huge new deficit, and a pre-NAFTA $29.6 billion deficit with Canada exploded. The 2013 NAFTA deficit was $177 billion, representing a more than six-fold increase in the NAFTA deficit.

• More than 845,000 specific U.S. workers, most in the manufacturing sector, have been certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) since NAFTA because they lost their jobs due to offshoring to, or imports from, Canada and Mexico.The TAA program is narrow, covering only a subset of jobs lost at manufacturing facilities, and is difficult to qualify for. Thus, the TAA numbers significantly undercount NAFTA job loss. A TAA database searchable by congressional district, sector and more is available here.

• NAFTA has contributed to downward pressure on U.S. wages and growing income inequality.There is broad consensus among economists that recent trade flows have been a significant contributor to growing income inequality; the only debate is about the degree of trade’s responsibility. NAFTA’s broadest economic impact has been to fundamentally transform the types of jobs and wages available for the 63 percent of American workers without a college degree. Most of those who lost manufacturing jobs to NAFTA offshoring and import competition found reemployment in lower-wage service sector jobs. 

• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, two out of every three displaced manufacturing workers who were rehired in 2012 experienced a wage reduction, most of them taking a pay cut of greater than 20 percent.  

• As increasing numbers of workers displaced from manufacturing jobs have joined those competing for non-offshorable, low-skill jobs in sectors such as hospitality and food service, real wages have also fallen in these sectors under NAFTA. The resulting downward pressure on middle-class wages has fueled recent growth in income inequality.

• Scores of environmental and health laws have been challenged in foreign tribunals through NAFTA’s controversial investor-state dispute resolution system. More than $360 million in compensation to investors has been extracted from NAFTA governments via “investor-state” tribunal challenges against toxics bans, land-use rules, water and forestry policies, and more. More than $12.4 billion is pending in such NAFTA claims, including challenges of medicine patent policies, a fracking moratorium and a renewable energy program.

• The average annual U.S. agricultural trade deficit with Mexico and Canada in NAFTA’s first two decades reached $975 million, almost three times the pre-NAFTA level. U.S. beef imports from Mexico and Canada, for example, have risen 133 percent. Over the past decade,  total U.S. food exports to Mexico and Canada have actually fallen slightly while U.S. food imports from Mexico and Canada have more than doubled. This stands in stark contrast to projections that NAFTA would allow U.S. farmers to export their way to newfound wealth and farm income stability. Despite a 239 percent rise in food imports from Canada and Mexico under NAFTA, the average nominal U.S. price of food in the United States has jumped 67 percent since NAFTA.

• The reductions in consumer goods prices that have materialized have not been sufficient to offset the losses to wages under NAFTA; U.S. workers without college degrees (63 percent of the workforce) likely have lost a net amount equal to 12.2 percent of their wages even after accounting for gains from cheaper goods.This net loss means a loss of more than $3,300 per year for a worker earning the median annual wage of $27,500.

• The export of subsidized U.S. corn did increase under NAFTA’s first decade, destroying the livelihoods of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and about 1.4 million additional Mexican workers whose livelihoods depended on agriculture. The desperate migration of those displaced from Mexico’s rural economy pushed down wages in Mexico’s border maquiladora factory zone and contributed to a doubling of Mexican immigration to the United States following NAFTA’s implementation.

• Facing displacement, rising prices and stagnant wages, more than half the Mexican population, and more than 60 percent of the rural population, still falls below the poverty line, despite the promises that NAFTA would bring broad prosperity to Mexicans. Real wages in Mexico have fallen significantly below pre-NAFTA levels as price increases for basic consumer goods have exceeded wage increases. A minimum wage earner in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than on the day that NAFTA took effect. Despite promises that NAFTA would benefit Mexican consumers by granting access to cheaper imported products, the cost of basic consumer goods in Mexico has risen to seven times the pre-NAFTA level, while the minimum wage stands at only four times the pre-NAFTA level. Though the price paid to Mexican farmers for corn plummeted after NAFTA, the deregulated retail price of tortillas – Mexico’s staple food – shot up 279 percent in the pact’s first 10 years.

“Given NAFTA’s damaging outcomes, few of the corporations or think tanks that sold it as a boon for all of us in the 1990s like to talk about it, but the reality is that their promises failed, the opposite occurred and millions of people were severely harmed and now this legacy is derailing President Obama’s misguided push to expand NAFTA through the TPP,” said Wallach.

2013 Trade Data: USITC Corrections of Last Week’s Census Data Show Why Obama’s TPP, Fast Track Quest Is in Trouble

This weekend’s U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) release of corrected 2013 year-end trade data goes a long way in explaining broad congressional and public opposition to the Obama administration’s trade agenda, which is premised on expanding to additional nations a model of trade pacts that the data show are failing most Americans. The data (graphs below) show:

A stunning decline in U.S. exports to Korea, a rise in imports from Korea, and a widening of the U.S. trade deficit under the Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

• In 20 out of 21 months since the Korea FTA took effect, U.S. goods exports to Korea have fallen below the average monthly level in the year before the deal.
• U.S. average monthly exports to Korea since the FTA are 12 percent lower than the pre-FTA monthly average, while monthly imports from Korea are up 3 percent.
• The monthly trade deficit with Korea has ballooned 49 percent compared to the pre-FTA level. These losses amount to tens of thousands of lost U.S. jobs.

Zero growth in U.S. goods exports relative to 2012, placing the United States decades behind in Obama’s stated goal to double exports in five years.

• Total U.S. goods exports in 2013 actually dropped slightly from 2012 after adjusting for inflation, revealing a negative 0.1 percent growth rate.
• The data show there is no chance to meet President Obama’s stated goal to double 2009’s exports by the end of this year. At the paltry 1 percent annual export growth rate seen over the past two years, the export-doubling goal would not be reached until 2054, 40 years behind schedule.

A staggering U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico after 20 years of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

• The 2013 U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico and Canada was $177 billion - a nearly seven-fold increase above the pre-NAFTA level, when the United States enjoyed a small trade surplus with Mexico and a modest deficit with Canada.
• Even worse for U.S. workers, the non-oil NAFTA deficit has multiplied more than 13-fold, costing hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. Indeed, the share of the combined U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada that is comprised of oil has declined since NAFTA.

Today’s USITC data correct last week’s Census Bureau trade data to remove re-exports – goods made elsewhere that pass through U.S. ports en route to final destinations. The corrected data only heaps further doubt on Obama’s prospects for getting Fast Track trade authority, now publicly opposed by most House Democrats, a sizeable bloc of House Republicans, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Obama has asked for Fast Track to push through Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a controversial deal modeled on the Korea FTA and NAFTA.

Statement of Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch

“Many in Congress and the public oppose NAFTA-on-steroids “trade” agreements like the TPP and Fast Track authority to expedite them because past trade deals have proved to be so damaging. Just like today for TPP, in the past we were sold on glorious projections of these deals’ benefits but the actual data show an ever-larger drop in U.S. exports to Korea since that pact and a growing trade deficit, a massive NAFTA trade deficit and overall zero growth for U.S. goods exports relative to last year despite implementation of more-of-the-same trade deals. The White House and the corporate lobby are trying to sell Congress the TPP and Fast Track with the same old promises about export growth and job creation, but today’s data show that under Obama’s only past major trade deal with Korea on which TPP is modeled, U.S. exports dropped dramatically, imports soared and the U.S. lost more jobs to a trade agreement.”

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TAFTA Studies Project Tiny Economic Gains, Assume No Costs from Gutting Safeguards

Over the last several days we've highlighted the threats that a new U.S.-EU "trade" deal, under negotiation this week, could pose to food safety, financial stability, and efforts to rein in climate change.  A “trade” deal only in name, the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) would require the United States and EU to conform domestic financial laws and regulations, climate policies, food and product safety standards, data privacy protections and other non-trade policies to TAFTA rules.

To sell such a dramatic rewrite of domestic safeguards to U.S. and EU policymakers and the general public, corporate lobby groups and TAFTA negotiators contend that the deal would bring economic benefits. TAFTA’s corporate proponents repeatedly point to a few theoretical studies to justify claims of increased national income resulting from the deal.

These studies use many dubious assumptions, questioned by economists at institutions such as the UN, to project TAFTA’s economic impact. Similar studies, when used for prior pacts, have produced vastly inaccurate predictions of gains. But even if one accepts all such assumptions regardless of their basis in reality, the studies project negligible economic “benefits” from TAFTA. Meanwhile, they ignore TAFTA’s likely costs to consumers, workers and the environment, despite the abundant evidence of such costs resulting from prior pacts.

Pro-TAFTA Study Projects Trade “Benefit” of Three Cents per Day

A standard argument for “free trade” agreements is that such deals reduce tariffs, thereby expanding trade, and that the benefit to all from access to cheaper imports outweighs the damage to those who lose their jobs. But tariffs between the United States and the EU are “already quite low,” as acknowledged by the U.S. Trade Representative. The EU and U.S. officials promoting TAFTA have readily stated that TAFTA’s primary goal is not tariff reduction, but the “elimination, reduction, or prevention of unnecessary ‘behind the border’” policies, such as domestic financial regulations, climate policies, food safety standards and product safety rules. 

That is why studies focused on the impact of TAFTA’s possible tariff reduction have produced meager estimates of any economic impact. Under the most optimistic scenario envisioned by a frequently cited pro-TAFTA study by the European Centre for International Political Economy, TAFTA tariff reductions would result in an estimated 1 percent increase in U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). But that estimate is unrealistically high, given that it assumes a contentious proposition of tariff reductions causing strong “dynamic” economic growth, a dubious theory at best. Noted academics have repeatedly cited empirical evidence showing no such trade-growth causation.  By omitting this assumption, the study notes that the theoretical TAFTA-prompted increase in U.S. GDP of $182 billion drops to just $20.5 billion, a 0.1 percent blip in what is projected to be an $18.3 trillion U.S. economy in the assumed year of TAFTA implementation. By comparison, economists estimate that the introduction of the fifth version of Apple’s iPhone delivered a GDP increase up to five times higher than the projected TAFTA effect.

TAFTA’s trivial trade impact shrinks even further when considering what the deal would mean in terms of actual income. The pro-TAFTA study projects that total annual U.S. national income would be just $4.6 billion higher under the deal. Even this number is unrealistic, given that it assumes that 100 percent of existing tariffs between the EU and the U.S. would be fully eliminated under the deal, an unlikely scenario given that the EU has already stated that sensitive products should be afforded exemptions from tariff reductions.  But proceeding with this inflated figure still results in deflated “benefits.” After adjusting for inflation and population growth in the years before the pact would be fully implemented, the projected $4.6 billion boost would amount to an extra three cents per person per day. 

Studies Ignore Costs, Use Big Assumptions to Project Tiny Gains from Weakened Safeguards

Several other studies touted by pro-TAFTA officials and industry associations focus not on the reduction of tariffs but on the deal’s central goal of reducing health, financial, environmental and other public interest regulations that have been euphemistically renamed “non-tariff barriers” or “trade irritants.” Leaked EU position papers reveal that TAFTA could include obligations for products and services that do not comply with such domestic safeguards to be allowed under processes called “equivalence” and “mutual recognition,” or obligations to actually alter domestic U.S. and EU policies to conform to new trans-Atlantic standards negotiated to be more convenient to business.  

Pro-TAFTA studies ignore the proven costs of such safeguard weakening while employing models based on the unproven business mantra that curtailing health, safety and environmental regulations would produce economic benefits for everyone. Despite such lopsided calculations, the studies still produce meager projections for TAFTA’s economic gains. An oft-cited pro-TAFTA study, commissioned by the European Commission and prepared by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, estimates that, if public interest regulations are significantly diluted or eliminated, TAFTA could produce a 0.2 – 0.4 percent increase in U.S. GDP (a $66 – 126 billion addition in 2027).

To arrive at this estimate of a smaller TAFTA gain than was delivered by the latest iPhone, the study assumes that up to one out of every four non-tariff barriers – which, according to the study, could include Wall Street regulations, food safety standards and carbon controls – would be reduced or eliminated. (The study acknowledges that some safeguards could not reasonably be slated for dismantling because doing so “may require constitutional changes…; because there is a lack of sufficient economic benefit to support the effort;...because of consumer preferences…; or due to other political sensitivities.”) To generate projections of economic gains from such safeguard dismantling, the study employs a methodology that UN economists have criticized as inchoate and unreliable: using an assumptions-laden computable general equilibrium model to study non-tariff policies.

In addition to the social and environmental toll that would result from such a degradation of health, safety, environmental, and other public interest standards, such regulatory weakening would also result in quantifiable monetary costs for U.S. consumers and the broader economy. The study ignored such costs.

For example, in the financial sector, the study names the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 as a “non-tariff barrier” on the target list of European businesses and officials. The Act created enhanced accounting and anti-fraud standards to prevent a recurrence of the Enron, WorldCom, and other corporate accounting scandals that destroyed billions of dollars of U.S. investments. The study also lists as a barrier U.S. “regulatory capital requirements,” which limit financial firms’ ability to take on risky bets that could lead to bankruptcy and financial instability. Indeed, the EU’s top financial regulator, Michel Barnier, has repeatedly criticized proposed U.S. capital requirements for foreign-owned banks – designed to rein in the excessive risk-taking that led to the Great Recession – while calling for such Wall Street reforms to be subject to TAFTA negotiations. Undermining such critical financial reregulation via TAFTA would heighten the risk of more accounting scandals or another financial crisis, threatening dire impacts on the real economy. Such risks hardly seem worth a small, speculative blip in GDP.  

Falling Exports under Korea FTA Likely to Bolster Fast Track Opposition

This week's government release of trade data highlights a stunning decline in U.S. exports to Korea, a rise in imports, and a ballooning of the U.S. trade deficit under the Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA).  With such sorry results emerging from the Korea deal, it's little wonder that 178 Democrats and Republicans this week rejected Obama's bid to Fast Track through Congress another FTA -- the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  

U.S. goods exports to Korea fell 8 percent and imports from Korea grew 8 percent under the first 18 months of the Korea deal, relative to the 18 months before the deal took effect. The shift provoked an incredible 56 percent growth in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea in the FTA’s first year and a half.

The Korea FTA’s abysmal record for U.S. jobs has been consistent: in 18 out of the 18 months since the deal took effect, U.S. exports to Korea have fallen below the average level seen in the year before the deal.  And in every single one of the 18 months since the FTA, the U.S. deficit with Korea has exceeded the average monthly deficit before the deal took effect (see graphs below). These losses amount to tens of thousands of lost U.S. jobs.

The disappointing data from the Korea FTA, a template for the TPP, is poised to generate even more congressional opposition to Obama’s request for Fast Track’s extraordinary authority to railroad the TPP through Congress on an expedited timeline with limited debate and no amendments.

Corporate TPP Factsheet Flurry: Many Sheets, Few Facts

Corporate America has just felled a (closed) national park’s worth of trees to draft 51 fancy, fanciful factsheets in attempt to better sell to a skeptical Congress the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) –the sweeping 12-country “free trade” agreement (FTA) mired in deadline-missing negotiations.

In projecting TPP impacts, the factsheets are heavy on platitudes and light on, well, facts. 

The factsheet series was released yesterday by the Business Roundtable (e.g. Goldman Sachs, Verizon, Pfizer, Exxon Mobil), the Coalition of Services Industries (e.g. Halliburton, Walmart, Citigroup), the National Association of Manufacturers (e.g. Lockheed Martin, Merck, Smithfield Foods), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate conglomerates. The series posits one set of counterfactual claims, and then replicates them in 50 state-specific variations. The resulting 306-page ream of TPP cheerleading is impressive for its girth, if not its veracity.

Here are the corporate alliances’ three claims about the TPP – sourced from conjecture – followed by some inconvenient and contradictory facts – sourced from data:

1.  Claim: The TPP will “expand trade between the United States and existing FTA partners.” 

Fact: The U.S. is not even discussing trade expansion (i.e. tariff reduction) with most existing FTA partners in the TPP negotiations.  How can something not under discussion be promised as a result of the deal?

Of the 11 countries negotiating the TPP with the United States, six already have FTAs with the U.S.: Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Singapore.  The U.S. Trade Representative has stated that the U.S. is not negotiating tariff reductions with most of these countries, in part because tariffs with these FTA partners are already relatively low.  Despite this, the corporate factsheets state, “the TPP negotiations provide an opportunity to…address a range of important tariff…barriers that currently impede exports to these countries.”  Even the TPP-promoting government officials negotiating the deal would have to disagree.  

2.  Claim: The TPP will “open new markets in countries that are not current FTA partners.”

Fact: U.S. exports have actually suffered under FTAs, not gained.  How can we do more of the same and expect different results?

U.S. goods exports to Korea fell 10 percent in the first year of the U.S.-Korea FTA, a template for the TPP that took effect in March 2012. Overall, U.S. export growth has actually been better without FTAs than with them. 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 38 percent over the last decade. Repeating the tired claim that we need FTAs to boost exports does not make it true.

In addition, some of the particular export growth “opportunities” highlighted by the corporate groups require a reality check.  For example, they cite New Zealand’s 5% tariff on U.S. lactose products as a barrier that, if only reduced via TPP, would herald an increase in U.S. dairy exports to New Zealand.  But U.S. dairy producers fear just the opposite.  U.S. dairy producers have lobbied against the reduction of dairy tariffs between New Zealand and the U.S., fearing that it would lead to their displacement, not a new export “opportunity.” The corporate factsheets’ tariff reduction promises are dotted with such inconvenient facts that, like flies on ointment, tarnish the rosy picture painted for Congress.

3.  Claim: The TPP will “encourage companies based in TPP countries to increase their business investment in the United States.”

Fact: Study after study has shown no correlation between a country’s foreign investment levels and its willingness to be bound to the extreme sort of investor privileges enshrined in the TPP.  With no proven upside, why would we sign up for the proven downside of empowering foreign investors to bypass domestic courts, drag the government to an extrajudicial tribunal, and demand taxpayer compensation for public interest policies that they find inconvenient?  

The corporate factsheets identify corporations based in TPP countries with operations in the United States, arguing (despite the evidence) that TPP investor privileges would encourage them to boost their business. In fact, the TPP would empower these foreign firms, on behalf of any of their 30,000 subsidiaries in the U.S., to directly attack U.S. health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies that they view as undermining new foreign investor rights that the TPP would establish. Extrajudicial tribunals, comprised of three private attorneys unaccountable to any electorate, would be authorized to determine the validity of the challenged policies and order unlimited taxpayer compensation if the policies undermined corporations’ “expected future profits.”  

This extreme “investor-state” system already has been included in a series of U.S. FTAs, forcing taxpayers to hand more than $400 million to corporations for toxics bans, land-use rules, regulatory permits, water and timber policies and more. Just under U.S. pacts, more than $14 billion remains pending in corporate claims against medicine patent policies, pollution clean ups, climate and energy laws, and other public interest polices. Are these the “barriers” to investment that the corporate alliances hope the TPP will remove? 

In the wake of this corporate factsheet flurry, the message to Congress is simple: check the facts.  For they are not found on these sheets.  And they reveal a truer and uglier picture of the TPP than the corporations’ latest attempt at airbrushing.

Beware of Outlandish Claims About Economic Benefits of U.S.-EU ‘Free Trade’ Deal

This Week’s U.S. International Trade Commission Study Assumes Total Elimination of U.S.-EU Consumer, Environmental, Financial Policy Differences, Follows British Embassy’s 50-State Rehash of Discredited 2009 Study Based on Similar Assumption

On Thursday, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) sent a report to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on the projected economic impact of the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), a report that is premised on the ridiculous assumption that 100 percent of the differences between U.S. and EU health, safety, environmental and financial regulations will be eliminated. Given that the report, which is not being made available to the press or public, relies on a premise that can only lead to fanciful results, U.S. negotiators should not consider it, much less use it to guide their approach to the agreement.

That study comes two days after yet another think tank report that recycled a litany of flawed assumptions from a 2009 study on TAFTA, chopping up baseless findings to present a 50-state version of imaginative projections of economic gains from a similar dismantling of public interest safeguards.

The core premise of these studies is the unproven business mantra that rolling back Wall Street reforms, food health standards and medicine safety regulations will somehow deliver economic gains to us all. The main contribution of the recent flurry of studies is the addition of extra gloss and fancy printing to the old, debunked assumption that such an assault on consumers, workers and the environment would have zero costs.

In its request for Thursday’s study, the USTR asked the USITC to assume an impossible outcome of U.S.-EU negotiations: “that any known U.S. non-tariff barrier will not be applicable” to imports from the EU if the sweeping deal were to take effect. By the USTR’s own definition, “non-tariff barriers” include differences in domestic financial regulations, food safety standards, product safety rules and other U.S. public interest safeguards that TAFTA apparently would render null. 

Even the most fanciful pro-TAFTA study, the 2009 ECORYS study prepared for the European Commission that has been regularly rehashed, including in a British Embassy report this week, avoided such an outlandish assumption, stating, “It is unlikely that all areas of regulatory divergence identified can actually be addressed … because this would require constitutional changes … ; because there is a lack of sufficient economic benefit to support the effort; …because of consumer preferences…; or because of political sensitivities.”

On Tuesday, the findings of the 2009 study were revived in another TAFTA-touting study, commissioned by the British Embassy in Washington, the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Atlantic Council. That glossy piece recycled the 2009 study’s improbable assumptions – breaking them down to state-by-state projections – to hypothesize the “gains” that TAFTA could deliver to each state if public interest safeguards were sufficiently weakened. The study assumes that TAFTA would eliminate one of every four “non-tariff barriers” – from the Volcker Rule at the center of Wall Street reform to safety standards for children’s toys to the U.S. ban on beef linked to mad-cow disease – at no cost to consumers.

While ignoring costs, the report uses a computable general equilibrium model to generate projections of hypothetical economic gains, despite studies showing that this methodology is inchoate and unreliable when studying non-tariff policies. Past studies using this cost-ignoring, gain-inflating methodology have still producedmeager projections for TAFTA’s “gains.” A pro-TAFTA study whose findings were recycled in Tuesday’s report estimated that, if TAFTA would significantly dilute or eliminate public interest regulations, the deal could produce a tiny 0.2 – 0.4 percent blip in U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). According to economists, that’s a smaller contribution to GDP than was delivered by the latest version of the iPhone. 

The list of “non-tariff barriers” slated for elimination in the underlying 2009 study includes food safety standards such as “Grade A dairy safety … rules and inspection requirements” for milk and financial stability measures such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that enacted accounting and anti-fraud standards to prevent a recurrence of Enron-like corporate accounting scandals. The study ignored the predictable social and economic costs that would result from such extreme regulatory rollback, such as an increase in the incidence of foodborne illness and a rise in financial instability.

Tuesday’s report, like its predecessors, made clear that TAFTA is not primarily about trade. Acknowledging that tariffs between the United States and the EU are “already quite low,” USTR and EU officials have made clear that TAFTA’s primary focus will be on the “elimination, reduction, or prevention of unnecessary ‘behind the border’” policies, such as the health, financial and environmental regulations targeted by Tuesday’s study. Attempts to exclusively measure the economic impact of TAFTA-prompted tariff reductions have produced embarrassingly meager results, estimating that even in the unlikely scenario of 100 percent tariff elimination, TAFTA would deliver economic benefits equivalent to three extra cents per person per day.

Gussying Up Old Assumptions: Today’s TAFTA-Touting Report Is a Re-Run

If you say something enough times, does it become true?  That seems to be the calculation of some proponents of the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), a sweeping deal that would require the U.S. and EU to conform domestic safeguards to deregulatory rules currently being negotiated under corporate supervision.  Pro-TAFTA think tanks have been rehashing the same set of starry-eyed prognostications of TAFTA economic benefits at a frequency (and concern for accuracy) that rivals iterations of the “Fast and the Furious” movie series. 

But repetition does not truth make.  As we’ve pointed out time and again, these reports keep using sweeping assumptions to project that TAFTA would bring a surprisingly miniscule economic blip.  And to get that blip, they assume that we’ll be willing to watch corporate-advised TAFTA negotiators dismantle a swath of health, environmental, financial, and other safeguards.  Click here for our retort to this parade of studies. 

Another TAFTA-touting report came out today, commissioned by the British Embassy in Washington, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the Atlantic Council (whose advisors include executives from J.P. Morgan and Big Pharma). 

The report offers 71 glossy pages of rewarmed speculations.  Here are the five main takeaways:

1. The “new” study is not really new.  It is largely a recycled version of another recycled version of a study that appeared in 2009.  Today’s report hypothesizes what TAFTA could mean for each U.S. state, assuming economic gains primarily from the weakening of financial regulations, climate policies, food and product safety standards, data privacy protections and other “trade irritants.” Those “gains” were tabulated about four years ago, dusted off in a study disseminated in March, and sliced up by state in today’s report.

2. The study confirms again that TAFTA is not about trade.  Since tariffs (an actual trade issue) are “already quite low” between the EU and U.S., pro-TAFTA government officials have readily stated that TAFTA’s primary goal is not tariff reduction, but the “elimination, reduction, or prevention of unnecessary ‘behind the border’” policies, ranging from Wall Street reforms to milk safety standards to GMO food labels. 

That’s why attempts to measure the economic impact of TAFTA-prompted tariff reductions have produced embarrassingly meager results.  A frequently cited pro-TAFTA study estimates that even in the unlikely scenario of 100% tariff elimination, TAFTA will deliver economic benefits equivalent to three extra cents per person per day.  To project a higher benefit, the study released today had to not just repeat this unrealistic assumption of 100% tariff reduction, but also assume that TAFTA would reduce health, financial and environmental regulations that have been euphemistically renamed “non-tariff barriers.” 

3. The study assumes zero downside of eliminating consumer and environmental safeguards. Today’s study assumes that TAFTA would eliminate one out of every four “non-tariff barriers” – from the Volcker Rule at the center of Wall Street reform to safety standards for children’s toys to the ban on beef linked to mad-cow disease – at no cost to consumers.  In addition to an obvious social and environmental toll, such a degradation of safeguards would also result in quantifiable monetary costs for U.S. consumers and the broader economy.

For example, the 2009 study on which today’s report relies counts “Grade A dairy safety…rules and inspection requirements” for milk and “a US ban on the import of uncooked meat products” in the case of “a health risk” as “non-tariff barriers” that could be slated for dismantling under TAFTA. The elimination of such consumer protections would likely result in greater incidence of food-borne illness in the United States, which would not only increase the medical costs of affected consumers, but would reduce their productivity levels and number of days at work, spelling a negative impact on aggregate economic output.

In financial services, the study names the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 as a “non-tariff barrier” on the target list of EU businesses and officials. The Act created enhanced accounting and anti-fraud standards to prevent a recurrence of the Enron, WorldCom, and other corporate accounting scandals that destroyed billions of dollars of U.S. investments. Undermining such critical financial reregulation via TAFTA would risk a return to such costly scandals. Today’s study ignored such costs.

4. The study uses contested models with assumptions that can turn economic losses into gains.  While ignoring costs, today's study strives to capture all theoreticaly plausible benefits by relying on assumptions-laden methods, such as using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to assess removal of “non-tariff barriers” (NTBs).  A U.N. study has questioned the reliability of this inchoate approach. It argues, “ongoing liberalization policy efforts to eliminate the restrictive effects of NTBs are proceeding with little economic analysis…the modeling of NTBs using general equilibrium modeling techniques is still in its early stages.” The U.N. study tested the usage of differing assumptions in a CGE model to estimate the economic effects of NTB removal and found that a change in the assumptions meant that the net economic effect of NTB removal actually switched from positive to negative for some countries (even before taking into account the above costs).  If today’s study performed any such testing of assumptions, it did not reveal the results. 

5. The study assumes a massive rollback of Buy American and Buy Local policies.  Another assumption of today’s study is that TAFTA would eliminate one half of all “procurement barriers,” a euphemism for popular policies like Buy American and Buy Local to ensure that U.S. government projects, funded by U.S. taxpayers, are used to create U.S. jobs.  It is rather fanciful to think that the U.S. Congress, state legislatures, or the U.S. public would accept such a clear-cutting of policies that enjoy 90% support.  Indeed, today’s study assumes an even greater undercutting of Buy American and Buy Local than the EU negotiators themselves are hoping for. In a leaked EU position paper on government procurement, the EU explicitly names 13 U.S. states and 23 U.S. cities it is targeting for rollback of Buy Local policies.  Today’s study assumes that the U.S. will offer to eliminate Buy Local in about twice as many states as the EU itself requested.

For more information on the lineage of TAFTA-touting studies from which today’s rosy report descended, click here to see our factsheet.