Obama on Export-Driven Growth; Donohue on How To Get It

by John Murphy

Reuters has this piece on President Obama speaking out on trade:

U.S. President Barack Obama warned on Monday that more U.S. job losses lay ahead despite a turnaround in the economy, and he called for a new “post bubble growth model” with greater focus on U.S. exports. “If Germany, a wealthy, highly unionized industrial nation, can generate 40 percent of its economy as export-based, then it seems to me that there is something we’re missing that they are doing right, and we have got to figure that out,” he told a meeting of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board…

“Are there mechanisms that we can start putting in place where we see the kind of growth that used to characterize the U.S. economy -- export-driven growth, manufacturing growth,” he demanded of the panel, which included business leaders as well as former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker…“Part of what we want is an aggressive trade policy that says we can compete, we’re not afraid of competing, we want to make sure we are competing in a fair way, and that other countries are not seeing the U.S. markets as simply the engine for their growth, without any reciprocity,” he said.

In fact, Chamber President Tom Donohue has been making many of these same points over the past few months. In a major speech on September 15, he declared that "a major surge of exports is our best path out of recession, double digit unemployment, and exploding deficits." Most importantly, he offered specific recommendations on ways to generate the "export-driven growth" that President Obama is referencing with increasingly frequency. We should set a national goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years. To achieve this goal we must:

• Enact pending free trade agreements. Our competitors have over a hundred preferential deals in the works with each other while we are sitting on our hands.
• Bring about a successful conclusion to Doha, which could open emerging markets to American goods and services and boost the global economy by as much as $700 billion.
• Enforce existing trade agreements and persuade our trading partners to level the playing field for Americans.
• Bring tens of thousands of new medium and small businesses into the global marketplace.
• Fight anti-trade measures promoted by labor unions and others, and expose their position as fundamentally anti-worker and harmful to our credibility and strategic interests abroad.
• Convince the President and his administration to end the uncertainty and hesitation that has thus far characterized their approach to trade and global commercial engagement.

The Obama administration will be stuck playing defense against market-closing proposals until it devises a forward-looking trade agenda of its own.

Beyond trade, to compete in a new global economy, we must reject the impulse to turn inward and instead be open to capital, talent, tourists, and workers from all over the world. We must equip our workforce with globally competitive skills, which will only happen by fundamentally reforming our schools and job training programs; and we must recognize the critical links between trade, geopolitics, and national security, and vigorously advance American interests by projecting our commercial influence on the global stage—just as our many competitors are doing.