U.S. trade policy should be used to reward countries that align with U.S. interests.
U.S. trade policy should be used to reward countries that align with U.S. interests.
N either political party has had a strategic theory on U.S. trade policy for years, if not decades. Republicans have lurched from the post-Cold War, free-trade-agreement era that bookended the two Bush presidencies all the way to the inconsistent anti-trade belligerence of Donald Trump. For their part, the Democrats have been caught between Big Labor’s demands (amid its declining importance to the economy yet rising importance to party fundraising) and the NAFTA-type desires of their white-collar constituents.
What’s missing in any of this is a framework from either party, something that governs how trade is pursued as a matter of self-interested national policy. What’s in the U.S. strategic interest is rarely ever considered, our recent bipartisan revocation of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and Belarus being a notable exception.
Since Democrats are unlikely to settle their internal Big Labor-New Democrat struggle anytime soon, it falls to the Republicans to merge the neoconservative free-trade ideology of yesteryear with the unstrategic hostility of Trump’s trade views. The Covid plague and Russia’s menacing invasion of Ukraine provide such a north star: U.S. trade policy should be used to reward countries that align with U.S. interests, and should not be available to countries that choose to put themselves in either the Russian or Chinese spheres of influence.
To do so, the GOP must admit two large mistakes of its past presidents. President Trump was wrong to blow up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would have taken the nations in the Pacific Rim away from China’s sphere of influence and toward the West’s. For his part, President George W. Bush had too much of the doe-eyed 1990s free trader in him, which led to an overly liberal era of free-trade agreements, most notably his administration’s alliance with the business community to kill congressional efforts to end Chinese PNTR.
How to strike a balance? On the negative side, kicking Russia and Belarus out of the PNTR club for the Ukrainian invasion was a good start. America could continue this work by isolating Russian- and Chinese-dependent states such as Kazakhstan. The Kazakhs have been milked like a cow by the Chinese for their oil (China owns or controls most of the oil in Kazakhstan), and President Tokayev earlier this year prevailed upon Russia’s Putin to send in troops to quell a rebellion against the Kazakh regime.
Congresswoman Dina Titus (D., Nev.) has introduced legislation to grant PNTR to Kazakhstan. That’s an example of what we should not be doing — giving away trade leverage to a country that is clearly in the orbit of both China and Russia, has a lousy record on human rights and democracy, and has shown no interest in moving toward the United States and away from its Cold War allies.
According to the 2020 State Department report on International Religious Freedom, Kazakhstan has formal religious tolerance of minorities, but if you’re the wrong kind of Muslim (Shiite, some Sunnis), or a Protestant Christian, things are bad there:
Authorities continued to arrest, detain, and imprison individuals on account of their religious beliefs or affiliation; restrict religious expression; prevent unregistered groups from practicing their faith; restrict assembly for peaceful religious activities; restrict public manifestation of religious belief; restrict religious expression and customs, including religious clothing; criminalize speech “inciting religious discord”; restrict proselytism; restrict the publication and distribution of religious literature; censor religious content; and restrict acquisition or use of buildings used for religious ceremonies and purposes. The government again raided religious services, prosecuted individuals for “illegal missionary activity,” and refused to register certain religious groups.
What about the positive side of the coin? You might recall that President Trump imposed “Section 301” tariffs on China in order to pressure that regime. He just as quickly started granting hundreds of exemptions from those tariffs, on the grounds that doing so would facilitate U.S. manufacturing and jobs. Most of these exemptions were temporary. President Biden let them expire or is on course to do so. Many in Congress on both sides of the aisle would like to see an orderly process to seek exemptions (permanently or not) from Section 301 tariffs, but right now, there is just no leadership at all from the Biden administration, which shows no sign of wanting to lift the tariffs, either. Pushing for an organized Section 301 exemption regime is a good example of where Republicans can simultaneously bash Biden, be hawkish on China, and look out for U.S. manufacturers and their employees.
The next GOP nominee for president should run on a free-trade agenda, but one that is not blind to our national-security interests contra China and Russia. That means letting the world know that if they want to trade with the United States, they will have a willing partner (we should start with the Brexited United Kingdom). But that necessarily entails being on our team, not Moscow’s or Beijing’s.