U. S. Exports are Down Due to the Pandemic and Trump’s Reckless Trade Policies
By Amb. Islam Siddiqui
The United States has been the leader in promoting international trade, economic growth, and prosperity at home and around the world over the last 75 years. American consumers make up less than 5% of the total world population whereas over 95% of our potential customers live outside our borders. Therefore, to maintain our status as the world’s largest trading nation, we must strive to increase our access to foreign markets for exports of “Made in America” products and services.
While imports of goods and services create jobs in the U.S., exports create millions of high-paying jobs that are vital for our economic prosperity. As a result, both Democratic and Republican U.S. administrations since 1948 have led international efforts at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to lower tariffs and remove non-scientific barriers to promote free and fair access to markets around the world. Currently, the U.S. is the largest exporting nation in services, and the second largest in manufactured goods in the world after China. In 2017, the United States’ share of the bilateral world trade in manufactured products was about 14%, while the 28 member states of the European Union accounted for about 30% and the remaining 164 countries in the world accounted for the other 56% of the total world trade. As a part of the Obama-Biden Administration, I was involved in trade negotiations leading to both the successful conclusion of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement and substantial progress in negotiating the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement. During this 8-year period, we were successful in opening new markets for U.S. agricultural products around the world and especially in China, which became our top export market. As a result, agricultural exports reached their highest levels in three successive years (2011–2013), climbing above $140 billion annually.
Unfortunately, President Trump’s decision to pull out of the TPP Agreement in 2017 was a geopolitical blunder and has created a vacuum in the Indo-Pacific region, allowing China to expand its influence in this vital strategic region. In addition, President Trump’s erratic and reckless policies in dealing with our trading partners, especially Europe and China, have further eroded U.S. trade leadership around the world, and hurt U.S. exports of manufactured goods and services. President Trump’s claim that the imposition of double-digit tariffs on goods imported from China are being paid by Chinese exporters and not U.S. importers is false and has resulted in thousands of job losses and business failures in America. Furthermore, our farmers and ranchers have lost vital export markets in China and instead are being subsidized by the U.S. government, to the tune of over $28 billion in tax dollars. While we expect to regain some of the lost share of global export markets as the COVID-19 pandemic is brought under control, international trade has been severely disrupted. In short: we as a nation are more isolated internationally and less better off than we were four years ago.
In order to reclaim U.S. leadership in international trade, level the playing field to promote U.S. exports, and create millions of high-paying U.S. jobs, it is vital that we elect Joe Biden as the next U.S. President. As Vice President for 8 years, Joe Biden was an integral part of the Obama Administration, which presided over a historic expansion of the U.S. economy after dealing with the Great Recession that began in 2007. I am confident that a Biden/Harris Administration in 2021 is what we need both to pull this country out of the Trump Recession and to properly respond to a global pandemic that has been catastrophically mismanaged by the current administration. We need a steady and experienced hand at the helm to manage our trade relations with the rest of the world, which accounts for more than 95% of our potential customers of U.S. goods and services.
Amb. Islam A. Siddiqui served as a former U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture and Chief Agricultural Negotiator.
