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TTALK QUOTE FOR TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2010
Filed from Portland, Oregon
Click here for yesterday’s quote
from Alan Wolff on Investment and Taxes
INVESTMENT AND THE
PRESIDENT’S TRADE AGENDA
"Substantial investment in
foreign markets has become an indispensable foundation for
supporting many American exports."
The President’s Trade
Agenda (USTR)
March 1, 2010
Context:
As it has done every March for the last several decades, the office
of the U.S. Trade Representative published in a
single volume yesterday the President’s trade agenda for the year
ahead and the Administration’s trade report for the year just
passed. Today’s quotation is from the first part of the report,
The President’s 2010 Trade Policy Agenda.
As one would expect in such a document, six of the seven continents
get some mention. (There was no reference to Antarctica). Similarly
most, though not all, of the issues in the standard trade policy
lexicon are touched upon. There are a few exceptions – no
references to currencies, for example – but most of the
other topics are there. The document opens with a discussion of
President Obama’s goal of doubling U.S.
exports in the next five years, and shortly before the
formal conclusion, it talks about the trade advisory system,
including the plan to drop registered lobbyists from participation.
Along the way, all of the major initiatives are discussed, from
the Doha Round, to the pending FTAs,
to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement.
In reading it, we were reminded of the tremendous stake that various
GBD members have in the issues USTR will be working on in the months
ahead. These include not only the broad issues of the various
agreements but also some very specific concerns. One of these is the
effort to dismantle the barriers to U.S. pork exports
that went up in response to the HIN1 virus, whether foolishly or
opportunistically. Another is the Doha Round effort to rein
in fish subsidies.
Comments:
The statement about investment and U.S. exports is hardly the most
prominent. We highlighted it for three reasons. First, it dovetails
with GBD’s most recent project, namely last Wednesday’s colloquium
on Valuing (U.S.) Global Investment.
Second, it struck us as a fairly explicit acknowledgement of the
idea that meeting the President’s export goal will be a lot easier
in conjunction with policies that protect rather than punish U.S.
foreign direct investment. And third, we sensed in the paragraphs on
this issue a welcome eagerness to move past the current review of
the “Model Bilateral Investment Treaty” to new agreements with
China, India, Vietnam, and Mauritius.
Nigel Lawson, the British Conservative
politician, is associated with the thought: "To govern is to
choose," as unassailably it is. And yet it is also the case
that a good part of the trick of politics is appearing not to
choose. If the President’s 2010 Trade Policy Agenda is at all
disquieting – and it is a little – it is because it seems overloaded
with litanies of American wish lists and not too concerned about
what can actually be achieved in the TPP negotiations and other fora.
SOURCES AND LINKS:
The
President’s Agenda is a link to The
President’s 2010 Trade Policy Agenda as presented on the USTR
website.
Valuing (U.S.) Global Investment takes you to an MP3 recording
of yesterday’s, February 24, GBD colloquium at the National Press
Club.
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The
Global Business Dialogue is an organization in which the members and
the staff speak for themselves. It does not express collective
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TTALK Quotes, in The
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and in other GBD publications are those of the editors, authors, and
others as attributed. Editor: R. K. Morris
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