The GOP has converged on St. Paul this week to hash out its party priorities and nominate John McCain as its new standardbearer.  And if the current party platform is to be believed, the Republicans have drawn a clear distinction between themselves and the Democratic Party when it comes to trade policy.

Some of the highlights of the Republican version of trade policy include a promise to reinstate Fast Track Trade Promotional Authority (TPA) and to push for pending free trade agreements, including one with Colombia.  On both counts, the Democrats have taken a different tack.

Interestingly, the GOP platform includes some verbatim text on trade policy that previously appeared on John McCain’s website.  Both McCain’s website and the GOP plank state exactly the following: “With 95 percent of the world’s customers outside our borders, we need to be at the table when trade rules are written to make sure that free trade is indeed a two-way street.”

ManufactureThis wishes to quibble with McCain’s and the GOP’s interpretation of “customers.”  A more accurate assessment would be that 95% of the world’s population exists outside U.S. borders.  Unfortunately, most of those people are not buying American-made products—a fact made self-evident by our glaring $700 billion annual trade deficit in 2007.

When considering America’s overall trade picture, the GOP platform seems to view manufacturing through a fairly narrow lens.  Their plank states that “America’s producers can compete successfully in the international arena — as long as they have a level playing field. Today’s tax code is tilted against them, with one of the highest corporate tax rates of all developed countries.” 

While tax issues undoubtedly have a bearing on manufacturing costs, ManufactureThis politely suggests that the much larger elephant in the room (no pun intended) would be the continued violations of both world trade law and U.S. trade agreements by our foreign trading partners, especially China.

The GOP Platform does note the need to “ensure that China fulfills its WTO obligations, especially those related to protecting intellectual property rights, elimination of subsidies, and repeal of import restrictions. China’s full integration into the global economy requires that it adopt a flexible monetary exchange rate and allow free movement of capital. China’s economic growth brings with it the responsibility for environmental improvement, both for its own people and for the world community.”

Such rhetoric sounds encouraging, especially because China’s brazen currency manipulation provides a massive, ongoing boost for China’s exporters.  Unfortunately, and as ManufactureThis has previously noted, Sen. McCain has consistently opposed any action to curb China’s illegal practices in favor of balanced trade.

And so it remains to be seen if the current Republican plank on trade will suggest any meaningful progress, or if it’s simply lip service to a worried electorate that has seen 3.5 million good-paying manufacturing jobs erased since 2000.

Manufacturing matters, though, and if Sen. McCain doesn’t grasp that—and soon—he’ll face a very uphill fight in the battleground states.

##

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Enforcing Trade Laws, Holding China Accountable, Manufacturing in the U.S.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.