more agressive free trade rhetoric from the Bush team. This article has appeared in a TON of rust belt papers.
Given the hardline stance China has taken wrt the Yuan, the Bush team is really pushing its luck with this pro-trade rhetoric. This is really bad politics on the part of Bush, they are politically tone deaf.
Bush Official Pushes Aggressive Trade Plan
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's top trade official outlined plans Tuesday to break down trade barriers around the world, pitching the benefits of free trade to lawmakers focused on job losses and election-year politics.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said his office, fresh from successful trade talks with five Central American countries, Australia and Morocco, will soon enter negotiations with Panama, several South American countries, Thailand and Bahrain.
"Recent U.S. trade agreements have cut hidden import taxes and saved every working family in America as much as $2,000 a year," Zoellick said in prepared remarks to the Senate Finance Committee. "Our new agreements could add more to these savings."
With the loss of American jobs to overseas competition a major election campaign theme, however, prospects that Congress would act on any trade agreement this year are not bright.
Implementing the pending agreements in Central America, Australia and Morocco "will require tough choices and political courage," said committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. "Unfortunately, political courage is not always in endless supply," especially in an election year, he said.
Congress in the past several years has ratified several major trade pacts, including free trade agreements with Jordan, Singapore and Chile, and has given the president "fast track" authority to negotiate new agreements that Congress must vote on but cannot alter.
But Democrats in particular say defective trade agreements have contributed to the flight of jobs out of the country. "I would like to focus today on one issue, and that's jobs," said Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, top Democrat on the committee and a supporter of free trade. "I think the primary goal of our trade policy should be to keep and create jobs."
Baucus also questioned the direction of the USTR's negotiations, noting that it is proposing talks with Sri Lanka, which bought $143 million in U.S. goods last year, while neighboring India is taking U.S. service-sector jobs and in 2002 cost American companies $342 million in retail revenues from software piracy.
Lawmakers also urged the USTR to get tougher on China, with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, accusing the Chinese of "egregious practices" of deliberately undervaluing their currency to reduce the prices of their goods by 15 percent to 40 percent.
America's trade deficit with China last year hit a record $124 billion, the highest imbalance ever recorded with any one country.
Zoellick said he was spending a significant amount of time on rampant piracy of intellectual property rights there, as well as on Chinese tax policies that work to the disadvantage of American exports of semiconductors and other goods. He also noted that U.S. exports to China have grown 75 percent over the past three years, and China has become a major consumer of U.S. electrical machinery and transportation and telecommunications equipment.
In addition to bilateral talks, Zoellick said, his office is working to advance negotiations among 34 Western Hemisphere nations to establish the world's largest free trade zone. The agency is also involved in the latest World Trade Organization round of talks to liberalize international trade, he said.
timesleader.com |
