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The Economist magazine recently ran a piece titled "When Harry Mugged Barry." Harry is Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Senate and a Democrat. Barry is a nickname that President Barack Obama used in his youth, when some Americans had even more difficulty with foreign sounding names than they do now.
The mugging stems from Reid's announcement that he's opposed to granting the President the authority to negotiate free trade agreements with Congress, getting an up or down vote, not the ability to amend the document. In the U.S., the President has the constitutional authority to negotiate agreements with foreign governments.
In an election cycle, many democrats fear alienating constituents such as labor unions and environmentalists who've long opposed trade agreements in the belief that they cause job losses in the U.S. and don't do enough to protect workers’ rights and the environment.
What Reid says is important because he can stop a vote to grant the President the authority he seeks. Meanwhile, president Obama is joined in an unlikely alliance with Republicans who favor the authority and feel they still have enough leverage to kill a bad agreement, if needed. The negotiations are in trouble, and estimates of when a deal might be forthcoming have gone from earlier last year, to later last year, to this year, to next year to maybe never.
A case for
What to do? The Economist quotes various sources whose estimates indicate that the two agreements will generate new trade worth $600 billion a year, with $200 billion of that going to the U.S. And these estimates under value services, which are less frequently traded but in which the U.S. is highly competitive, particularly in finance and transport. If both agreements become law, fully two-thirds of the word's output will be covered by FTAs, with the U.S. right in the middle of things.
And it's not just Harry threatening to toss a spanner into the FTA gears. Detroit automakers are now saying that any agreement involving Japan requires that country to further open its domestic car market, arguing that the U.S. brands’ share is a paltry one percent. Yes, more purchases of U.S. brands would help workers and balance sheets in the U.S. but not by enough to threaten the entire agreement or Japan’s participation in it.
A case against
That brings us around to another critique of the two agreements now in negotiations: that they are dominated by very large companies that want rules relaxed so that they can move money around more easily, sell more stuff, and make it more difficult for participating governments to restrict their activities. Those left in the dark about the details of what’s being bargained over got a break recently when the head negotiator for the U.S. promised to open the process so that other viewpoints could weigh in. It won't be enough to save things.
The better argument against FTAs is that they cause job losses, though it's difficult to say how many. But most of the jobs are lower skilled manufacturing jobs, which might have vanished anyway because of increased productivity and automation, though this is of little consolation to those losing their jobs. The U.S., nor any other country, has sufficiently addressed how to generate new jobs to replace those that are lost due to technology or more trade.
It's equally true that FTAs create jobs, and for every billion dollars in exports more than 5000 jobs are created. The jobs tend to be higher skilled and companies that export pay their workers almost 18 percent more than companies that don't export.
An alternative to-do list
Will it be a disaster if these agreements aren’t approved in the remaining time of this administration? Probably not. Tariff rates are at historically low levels, and other restraints on trade have eased. It’s probable that the big winners from a deal will be multinational corporations, not SMEs that would benefit much more from more efficient customs procedures, better infrastructure on the U.S.-Mexico border, fewer items on the U.S. export controls list, better access to export financing, and lower de minimus rates that will remove tariffs on lower value shipments of little interest to the multinationals.
One interesting sideshow is the level of President Obama’s direct involvement in the fate of the deals either in Congress or the court of public opinion. There hasn’t been much. Consequently, the special interests have been left to duke it out with gridlock the likely result.
| Product Model | Inside Diameter | Outside Diameter | Thickness |
| LQBR25-2LS bearing | 25 | 35 | 100 |
| LQBR20-2LS bearing | 20 | 28 | 85 |