Created 2/21/1996
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Clinton v. Dole on Trade
Brad DeLong
U.C. Berkeley
Brad DeLong is Associate Professor of Economics at U.C. Berkeley, and
served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy
for the first two and a half years of the Clinton administration; he is
co-author of a recent article in Foreign Affairs on The
Mexican Peso Crisis entitled "The Case for Mexico's Rescue".
Thank you for asking me here today.
If you had asked me three and a half years ago, on Inauguration Day back
in 1993, what the differences were between President Clinton and then-Senator
Dole on international trade issues, I would have replied that the differences
were small and unimportant: both were strong believers in the freer-trade
policy consensus that has guided American international economic policy
for the past half century.
Maybe the Democrat would have been more likely to restrict imports
to protect the domestic markets of particular unionized industries, or more
likely to restrict exports in an attempt to express moral displeasure with
particular barbaric regimes. But then-Senator Dole had a visible strain
of protectionism (as applied to any agricultural product that might be grown
in Kansas); he shared an old-time midwestern Republican suspicion of any
of the international arrangements and agencies originally sponsored by Roosevelt
and Truman; he had spent a lot of time in the Washington culture of favors--you
help me get reelected, and I'll help you--and restrictions on people's foreign
competitors are a way for those in government to help.
But these caveats are small potatoes and side issues. I would have
said that there was barely a dime's worth of difference--if that--between
the two.
I would have been wrong. Today I think it is clear that the differences
between President Clinton and former Senator Dole on international trade
issues are large and important.
Three factors have led me to change my mind.
The first is that I did not understand, three and a half years ago, how
being Governor of Arkansas for more than a decade had molded President Clinton's
thinking about the importance of international trade for economic growth.
In Governor Clinton's experience, the economy of Arkansas stagnated unless
Arkansas companies could sell their products outside of Arkansas--and he
spent a large chunk of his time as Governor promoting Arkansas companies
and products, both to buyers in other states and to buyers abroad. He has
generalized this more than decade of experience with the state to the nation.
Thus ex-Governor Clinton feels in his bones the connection between exports
in economic growth in a way that no ex-Senator does.
This leads into the second factor, the high demonstrated priority that President
Clinton has given to trade--both trade liberalization measures, and also
export expansion measures--in his administration. I heard domestic advisors
warn that making NAFTA a high priority in the fall of 1993 would push health
care into 1994, and give opponents an extra year to organize against health
care reform; yet he made NAFTA his highest priority in the fall of 1993.
I heard strategists warn that pushing for GATT approval in the fall of 1994
might weaken his political base among the non-pro-free-trade elements of
the Democratic coalition; he made GATT approval a high priority in the fall
of 1994.
In early 1995--when the administration was working to contain the Mexican
peso crisis, and to stop it from becoming a general liquidity crisis affecting
many industrializing economies--administration opposition to a badly-drafted
balanced-budget amendment was moderated if it threatened to endanger bipartisan
cooperation on international finance.
President Clinton has a proven, tested, visible record of being willing
to take major political risks in order to do what he thinks is right for
the country as far as international economic policy is concerned. And what
he thinks is right for the country is lowering barriers to international
trade and expanding U.S. access to export markets.
By contrast--and this is the third factor--ex-Senator Dole has no such record
of a willingness to take political risks for the sake of the international
economy. I remember the winter of 1995, when the Treasury's international
economists headed by Deputy Secretary Lawrence Summers, the IMF's economists
headed by Principal Deputy Director Stanley Fischer, and the Federal Reserve
headed by Chairman Alan Greenspan all agreed that we faced a classic liquidity
crisis: government action to maintain orderly market conditions and provide
liquidity to the international economy could avoid a deep depression in
the industrializing world at very little risk to the U.S. Treasury or the
U.S. economy. The President and the bipartisan Congressional leadership
agreed that a loan guarantee program was good--non-partisan--policy, and
that they should go forward with it.
Then things got hot.
The Ralph Naders and the Pat Buchanans began denouncing the $50 billion
dollar bailout by U.S. taxpayers for Mexican plutocrats--never mind that
the U.S. Treasury is so far up $2 billion on the deal, and that Mexico is
paying back its loans to the U.S. Treasury as fast as it can because they
were made at truly usurious interest rates.
The President stayed the course, spending political capital and finally
running major political risks on an international economic issue yet again
by going ahead with a peso rescue package based on his own executive powers.
Speaker Gingrich stayed the course for a while, spending political capital
to try to corral Republican house members in support--and some of his troubles
with the Republican fundamentalists in the fall of 1995 would, I think,
have been avoided had he not spent political capital trying for a while
to do the right thing on the international economy.
Majority Leader Dole? He quickly vanished.
Moreover, Senator D'Amato--close political ally of Dole, the guy who made
sure everyone else was kept off of the New York Republican primary ballot
this spring--began leaking documents. I remmber one memorandum of mine appearing
in a story by a tame reporter with passages ripped from context and surrounded
by quotes from D'Amato, the--false--import of which was that the Treasury
had foreseen Mexico's devaluation more than eight months in advance, and
had kept quiet to help Mexican plutocrats profit at the expense of American
investors.
My suspicion then--my belief today--is that Dole was looking for an exit
strategy: he would not have been displeased had D'Amato found something
in administration decision-making that would allow Dole to say that he had
been deceived, and give him an excuse to change course and oppose the peso
rescue.
This is not to say that I think that ex-Senator Dole is opposed to U.S.
action to maintain the stability of the international financial system,
or is opposed to freer trade--although Pat Buchanan did get Dole to grumble
in New Hampshire that he would not vote for the NAFTA treaty if it were
before him today. I think that Dole supports the free-trade free-investment
consensus in a tepid way: is willing, for example, to respect and follow,
say, Chairman Greenspan's judgment or, say, the pro-free-trade consensus--as
long as the political heat is low.
But I do not think that international trade and financial issues are among
the set of issues where ex-Senator Dole cares deeply about making sure we
follow the right policy.
From our perspective this is unfortunate: for if the GATT and NAFTA debates
have taught us anything, it is that the political heat on trade liberalization
issues has become extremely high, as trade and the international economy
have become lightning rods for economic discontent in general, economic
discontent that has in reality very, very little to do with international
trade.
So now I think that there is much more than a dime's worth of difference
between the President and ex-Senator Dole on international economic issues.
I think that trade liberalization and export expansion will do much better
under President Clinton than they would do under a President Dole--not because
the two candidates say very different things on the stump, but because of
how high the political heat is, because of what they have done, and because
of who they are.
Thank you.
Summary of Dole's "Asia Speech": America and Asia: Restoring
U.S. Leadership in the Pacific
(May 9, 1996; Center for Strategic & International Studies Statesmen
Forum)
Claim: "Candidate Clinton's new China policy had an unusually
short shelf life once he became President Clinton-- collapsing in about
six months under the weight of its own naive and contradictory purposes.
After considerable confusion and embarrassment, and after substantially
damaging America's international credibility, the President had arrived
at an argument that was identical to the Bush Administration's position
on MFN which President Clinton had condemned as immoral."
Response: True.
Claim: "the Administration's amateurish and ineffective posturing
on trade disputes had strained [U.S.-Japanese] ties...In 1995, the Clinton
Administration provoked a trade war, lost it, and then declared victory
...The result has been an increase in both the bilateral trade deficit and
in Japanese trade nationalism."
Response: The bilateral trade deficit has grown--Robert Dole's
economists say--because of Japan's recession. President Clinton has made
progress (certainly more progress than any other recent president) in opening
Japan's markets:
- 1993 "framework" agreement
- 21 bilateral agreements with Japan on trade issues
- Exports up 34 percent in three years--faster expansion than during
either the Reagan or the Bush administrations.
- Exports in sectors that have been the object of bilateral agreements
are up by 85 percent.
Claim: "Sustained trade deficits with Japan constitute a
transfer of wealth and jobs from America."
Response: Gee. Most economists would say that sustained trade
deficits with Japan are necessary to finance the Japanese purchases of
U.S. Treasury securities that have kept the federal budget deficits that
Bob Dole created as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from having
even more destructive consequences for the American economy.
Claim: "Japan must open its sanctuary market and level the
playing field. We must start by resolving ongoing commercial disputes that
cost U.S.companies millions of dollars in lost sales. If negotiated solutions
are not reached, swift action under existing U.S. trade laws will be required."
Response: Either the Clinton administration's handling of U.S.-Japan
bilateral trade relations has been too aggressive and confrontational,
or not aggressive enough. Which is it? It's hard to make sense of this
claim--except that Dole's strategists decided that they should drop a pro-U.S.
access to Japanese markets paragraph into the middle of the speech, even
though it does not fit.
Claim: "It is no secret that I did not agree with President
Clinton's decision to normalize relations with Vietnam....shared economic
and other interests can only be realized after the -- as yet unachieved--
fullest possible accounting for our missing servicemen. Vietnam must understand
that further progress on the POW/MIA issue will remain our highest bilateral
priority."
Response: We all know that should Dole become President, his
Defense Secretary will report what Bush's Defense Secretary reported--that
the POW/MIA issue in Vietnam is a red herring. This shows Dole's willingness
to sacrifice international substance to domestic political shadow--and
to cruelly torment with false hopes the relatives of some who died in Vietnam.
Claim: "The growing rapprochement between Russia and China
is more than a cause for concern -- it is cry for responsible American leadership
and sound American policy."
Response: The Cold War is over. Russia is a struggling democracy,
for which we should wish peace so that they can attempt the arduous task
of domestic political and economic reconstruction. To lament that Russia
is no longer at crossed swords with China is "old thinking"--thinking
that fails to realize that the world has changed, and that the Chief of
Staff in the Kremlin is no longer the totalitarian Vyacheslav Molotov but
the democrat Anatoly Chubias.
Claim: "Incredibly, in the face of all these urgent challenges,
President Clinton told Chinese President Jiang last year that the greatest
threat China posed to American security was China's pollution potential."
Response: There is a good chance that President Clinton is right
if you take the long view. Just because Republican politicians would rather
not think about the possibility of global climate change under the impact
of human industrial civilization does not mean that it may not become the
important issue of the second half of the twenty-first century.
Claim: "Our current trade deficit [with China] is $34 billion
and climbing. China holds immense promise as a market for U.S. goods, services
and agricultural products. But China is mortgaging that promise through
protectionist policies."
Response: Our current trade deficit of China arises because Chinese
entrepreneurs take their dollar earnings and stash them in New York banks--so
that they will have resources should China once again reverse its politics
and should they be forced to flee.
Clinton Administration 1997 Trade Agenda
- Full implementation of past agreements
- Uruguay Round
- WTO Ministerial Conference at the end of 1996
- GATS
- NAFTA
- NADBank and BECC
- NAALC [North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation]
- Japan
- 1993 "framework" agreement; 20 agreements under this administration
to date
- U.S. exports to Japan up 34 percent in the last three years
- China
- Intellectual property
- Market access
- Europe
- Aircraft
- Pasta subsidies
- Fruit subsidies
- Wine
- Non-grain feed
- Intellectual property
- Investment
- Trade and environment
Created 2/21/1996
Go to Brad DeLong's Home
Page
Associate Professor of Economics Brad De
Long, 601 Evans
University of California at Berkeley; Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
(510) 643-4027 phone (510) 642-6615 fax
delong@econ.berkeley.edu
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/