Mixed Messages from the White House Amid New Focus on Trade

(Bridges Weekly)

The White House appears to have awoken from its year-long slumber on trade matters, but the political climate for liberalising trade in the world’s biggest national economy remains problematic.

The action began on 27 January, when U.S. President Barack Obama, addressing a joint session of Congress for his State of the Union address, highlighted trade as an important tool for economic recovery and job creation, calling for the U.S. to double its exports in five years.

A week later, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke explained how the White House intends to achieve those goals. The administration will create the first-ever “government-wide export-promotion strategy” that will receive “the focused attention” of the president and his cabinet, Locke said in an address at Washington’s National Press Club on 4 February. The new National Export Initiative will work on three fronts: expanding trade advocacy at home and abroad; helping companies, especially small- and medium-sized firms, access the credit they need to export their products; and enforcing trade rules so that U.S. exporters will not be unfairly blocked from foreign markets.

“This initiative will correct an economic blind spot that has allowed other countries to chip away at America’s international competitiveness,” Locke said.

Turning to new markets, the Commerce Secretary mentioned the work that the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office is doing to open up trade with “key growth areas” in Asia and elsewhere, as well as the USTR’s efforts to strike “an ambitious and balanced” deal to end the WTO’s Doha Round talks. Locke referred briefly to Washington’s three pending bilateral trade deals – with Colombia, Panama and South Korea – noting that the White House aims to address “outstanding concerns” with each of the pacts. Read more here.