Stifling the Economy, One Argument at a Time

By ROBERT E. LIGHTHIZER
NYT

FRUSTRATED with years of delay and stonewalling, 130 members of Congress last week urged the Obama administration to punish China for manipulating the value of its currency to the detriment of American exports. But this issue does not stand alone; it is part of the larger, murkier world of international trade policy, centered on the Doha round of World Trade Organization negotiations. These talks, which began in 2001, long ago became a quagmire. It’s time to admit the global economy has passed them by and pull the plug on them.

The trade talks, which never had more than modest support from American businesses, were intended not just to lower barriers to trade, but particularly to “ensure that developing countries, and especially the least-developed among them, secure a share in the growth of world trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development.” Given that Western countries had enjoyed significant economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, helping poorer states seemed like a noble goal.

There was never much reason to believe that the Doha round would really help United States workers and businesses. American farmers in particular dislike the negotiators’ focus on reducing or eliminating their government subsidies — given the limited gains they would see in real foreign-market access.

Global trade officials claimed that Doha could be used to further open developing markets like China and India to American manufacturers, but — as the National Association of Manufacturers has pointed out for years — such countries have refused to put on the table any significant market-opening offers. Finally, efforts to use the Doha round to improve export opportunities for American service providers have also gone nowhere.

(More here.)

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