Topic: World Trade Organization

China Fight Shows Obama’s Cynicism

Jonathan S. Tobin 07.05.2012 - 3:07 PM

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is paid to deny the obvious on a daily basis, but even his ability to lie on behalf of his boss was strained to the max today when he told reporters on Air Force One the administration’s decision to file a complaint with the World Trade Organization about Chinese tariffs on American cars had nothing to do with the president’s re-election campaign. The WTO complaint just happened to coincide with President Obama’s bus tour of Rust Belt states where U.S. cars are manufactured and where he will beat his chest about the beastliness of China’s unfair trade practices. But though the move comes after three years of kowtowing to Beijing, Carney asserted that the complaint was in the works for years and the timing was pure coincidence.

“It can’t suddenly be a political action because it happens during the campaign,” Carney told the press. Oh, no?

This rhetorical flight of fancy doesn’t just display the boundless cynicism of the Obama campaign. It also illustrates the way the president is prepared to seemingly alter his foreign policy to suit the needs of his re-election hopes. Just as he expects friends of Israel to forget about what occurred during the first three years of his presidency prior to the current Jewish charm offensive he is pursuing, he thinks auto workers and their families have memories that are equally as poor.

Middle East Chaos

Jennifer Rubin 10.27.2010 - 12:04 PM

It is not simply that Iran is moving steadily toward membership in the nuclear powers’ club. It is not only that the UN is plotting to carve up Israel. No, these are symptoms of an underlying problem: the U.S.’s retreat from the Middle East and the decline of American influence. There are other signs as well.

The administration has been demonstrating abject weakness with Syria. It mounted no meaningful response to violations of UN Resolution 1701. It has attempted to confirm and redeploy an ambassador to Damascus. Back in March, Elliott Abrams reeled off the list of “engagement” moves that bore an uncanny resemblance to appeasement:

* High level envoys have been sent to Damascus: Under Secretary of State William Burns visited Syria in mid-February, the highest ranking U.S. official to set foot there in more than five years, and Middle East envoy George Mitchell has visited three times. High-ranking Central Command officers have been sent to Damascus to discuss cooperation against terrorism.

* President Obama has now nominated an ambassador to Damascus, the first since Margaret Scobey was withdrawn in 2005 after the murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon (which was widely blamed on the Assad regime).

* The president has also removed the American block to Syria’s attempt to join the World Trade Organization.

* The United States has eased some export licenses for Syria, mostly in the area of aircraft.

* Syria’s deputy foreign minister was invited to Washington in October, the first such visit in several years.

So how’s that working out? As we’ve seen, Bashar al-Assad has moved ever closer to Iran (the opposite reaction intended by the Obama team), even as he displays his contempt for the U.S.:

Syria’s president has accused the United States of sowing chaos overseas, snubbing Washington’s efforts to improve ties with Damascus. Syrian President Bashar Assad told Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that the US “created chaos in every place it entered.” “Is Afghanistan stable? Is Somalia stable? Did they bring stability to Lebanon in 1983?” Assad asked, referring to US intervention in Lebanon’s 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

To this, the U.S. replied, “Are not.” In diplomatic terms: “Spokesman P.J. Crowley charged that Syria is destabilizing Lebanon by supplying arms to militants and issuing arrest warrants for Lebanese officials. ‘These activities by Syria directly undermine Lebanon’s sovereignty and directly undermine Syria’s stated commitments to Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence,’ Crowley said. ‘We believe we’re playing a constructive role in the region, and we believe that Syria is not.”’ This “tough retort,” according to the press account, is what passes for the administration’s Syria policy.

And speaking of Lebanon:

The Obama administration, already struggling to stave off a collapse of Middle East peace talks, is increasingly alarmed by unrest in Lebanon, whose own fragile peace is being threatened by militant opponents of a politically charged investigation into the killing in 2005 of a former Lebanese leader.

With an international tribunal expected to hand down indictments in the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in the coming months, the Hezbollah militia is maneuvering furiously to halt the investigation, or failing that, to unseat Lebanon’s government, which backs it.

The New York Times helpfully offers that the Obama team has, contrary to appearances, really (honestly!) not been obsessed with the failed Palestinian-Israeli non-peace talks. It has instead been focused on this looming crisis:

The administration’s worries go beyond Lebanon itself, and help explain why it, and not the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, has been the major preoccupation of American foreign policy officials for the last few weeks. The diplomatic activity follows a splashy tour of Lebanon by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who got an ecstatic reception from members of Hezbollah, the Shiite movement financed and equipped by Iran. American officials were particularly struck by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s trip to a small town a few miles north of the Israeli border, where he called for the “Zionists to be wiped out.”

With unintended comedic effect, the dispatched U.S. envoy, Jeffrey D. Feltman, proclaims: “You don’t want the perception of a vacuum. … You don’t want the perception that Ahmadinejad is the only game in town.” Umm, it’s a little late for that realization, isn’t it? And if that’s the problem, then throwing ourselves at the mullahs’ feet in order to restart the charade of nuclear talks is hardly going to improve matters.

RE: Frolicking with Despots

Jennifer Rubin 06.17.2010 - 9:04 AM

OK, not every Democrat is enamored of Obama’s Syrian engagement and technology jaunt:

One House Democratic staffer, briefed in advance of the trip by representatives from the State Department Near East Affairs bureau, called it “f***ing idiotic.”

The staffer said State people briefing congressional staff on the trip said, “we are going to infiltrate them (Syria) with technology without them even knowing it.”

“It’s a stupid thing to do,” he said. “Because they are so enamored of their own brilliance. It’s ridiculous. They don’t know what they are doing if they think they are going to subvert the Syrian government with technology and Syria won’t even notice.”

And not every foreign policy guru is shy about blasting the administration:

The administration thinks “they can make Assad like Gorbachev,” the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Schenker said. “They think they are going to have some level of opening [in Syria] with the Internet.”

But “everything that the administration has dangled in front of the Syrians so far has not worked,” Schenker continued. “So now they are sweetening the pot. … The Obama administration has been trying to think creatively. They think that this is a key. They have given a whole number of things to Syria,” including airplane spare parts and lifting U.S. opposition to Syria applying for membership in the World Trade Organization.

Unfortunately, a different mentality pervades this administration, and there is no congressional majority willing to exercise the power of the purse to put a stop to this nonsense.

Rand Paul’s Foreign Policy

Max Boot 05.19.2010 - 3:51 PM

Rand Paul has tried to dial back the extreme isolationist rhetoric expressed by his father, Ron Paul, who once suggested that 9/11 was our fault for provoking al-Qaeda. For instance, the junior Paul, who is now the GOP Senate candidate in Kentucky, says that he’s against a “wholesale withdrawal” from Afghanistan or Iraq (as opposed to a partial pullout?) and that he’s in favor of winning wars once we get into them. Moreover, he favors keeping Guantanamo open and trying terrorists in military tribunals.

But his victory is still bad news for Republicans who believe in a strong and active foreign policy. All you have to do is look at his website to see that he holds a quirky — and untenable — view of a “Fortress America.” He writes, “I believe our greatest national security threat is our lack of security at the border,” a threat that he proposes to address by imposing “a moratorium on Visas from about ten rogue nations or anybody that has traveled to those nations.” This may sound like a seductive solution, but it will not keep us safe, because numerous terrorists (like the would-be Times Square bomber) already have U.S. citizenship or citizenship from non-rogue states such as the United Kingdom. By closing our doors to “rogue nation” citizens (which nations qualify? he doesn’t say), he spurns our best counter-radicalization tool — the ability to educate foreign students in the United States.

The rest of his bare-bones foreign-policy statements consists of red herrings, such as his demand “that we fight only under U.S. Commander and not the UN” — as if UN command of U.S. forces were a big issue. Only in the Paul household, I suspect. And maybe the Pat Buchanan household too. Rand Paul really goes deep into isolationist territory with his views on “sovereignty”:

The Founding Fathers warned us that foreign alliances sacrifice our independence as a nation. In Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, he asserted that America should have “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” Yet today, America is often subservient to foreign bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), and the United Nations (UN). …

Rand Paul proposes that America can engage the world in free trade, develop lucrative commercial relationships with other nations, and defend its national interests without funding or joining international organizations. The U.S. Government must answer only to the Constitution and the citizens protected by it.

I suppose some on the right would join him in denouncing the UN, but what about the IMF, World Bank, and WTO? Generally I think most conservatives are Hamiltonian (one of the Founding Fathers whom Paul doesn’t mention) and believe that we gain from such trade and economic arrangements, which, yes, restrict sovereignty to some small degree but in the process immeasurably benefit the United States by curtailing tariffs and other obstacles to economic growth. There is ample room to criticize and improve the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, and other organizations, but Paul’s suggestion that we not fund or join any international organizations suggests that he is advocating a fringe foreign-policy outlook — one I hope is not representative of the Tea Party movement as a whole.

Hillary On The Factor

Jennifer Rubin 05.01.2008 - 6:29 AM

Hillary Clinton went on Bill O’Reilly’s Factor. The first half of the interview can be seen here and here. If you grade on substance, she’s fairly awful. She going to sue OPEC through the World Trade Organization and tax oil companies to bring down gas prices. (Honest. No, it’s not clear what happens if OPEC doesn’t answer the first set of written discovery requests.) She’s raising income taxes and she’s not willing to come clean on how much her health care plan will cost.

But on style it’s hard not to gape at her tour de force – pugnacious, funny (she says with a twinkle in her eye that she’d expect nothing but “fair and balanced” coverage from Fox), quick on her feet and, within the confines of her shtick, somewhat candid. She’s a phony, but sort of a real phony.

For Democrats and independents who buy into the populist economics and think someone really is going to have to go fight the mean Republicans and the big bad insurance and oil companies, it’s hard to imagine a feistier combatant.

Republicans have long worried that Barack Obama would be a soothing, deceptively alluring figure in a general election. I think what we saw on O’Reilly was that if she makes it that far, Clinton will be a different, but perhaps equally challenging, figure. Somewhere along the way she learned to articulate a nostalgic, even patriotic vision (“Let’s go back to the 50′s and 60′s,” she says) in which, she says, the middle class isn’t under seige. You can argue with her facts, but the message is clear, the audience specific, and the patter fairly effective. One wonders how skilled John McCain will be in arguing with her about health care and the relative merits of the Clinton and Bush economies. Part 2 of the interview will air tonight.

Slapping Putin’s Back

Gordon G. Chang 04.01.2008 - 4:11 PM

Reuters reports that when President Bush meets Vladimir Putin this Sunday, the United States and Russia will sign what an unidentified Kremlin source describes as “a joint document which will become a road map of our cooperation during a transitional period and for the medium term.” Yesterday, Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the document, said this: “Of course we have to register all the achievements during the two terms of presidents Bush and Putin.”

It’s good that the two countries want to accentuate the positive, but the upcoming summit between the friendly leaders runs the risk of irrelevance. As Jim Hoagland wrote on Friday, Bush and Putin wish to end their relationship as presidents “in the soft glow of mutual legacy-burnishing . . . They will leave relations between the White House and the Kremlin mired in a rare soggy middle ground of extended ambivalence.”

I hope Hoagland’s wrong: there’s no lack of substantive issues to tackle. There are, for instance, NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, America’s planned missile defense system for Europe, Russia’s adherence to the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, the extension of START, recognition of Kosovo’s independence, the Kremlin’s support for the Iranian nuclear program, Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, and Moscow’s supply of advanced weaponry to China.

Bush, as we all know, leaves office soon. Back-slapping with the Russian autocrat in his seaside dacha seems like a particularly bad use of time, especially at this crucial moment.

“What Is Going To Be Done about China?”

Gordon G. Chang 01.22.2008 - 2:15 PM

Yesterday I suggested that President Bush use all the leverage we have to convince Beijing to disarm Kim Jong Il. The Chinese supply about 90 percent of North Korea’s oil, 80 percent of its consumer goods, and 45 percent of its food. Pyongyang, as we know, has no more loyal supporter in the councils of diplomacy than Beijing. Without China, Kim “could neither bark nor bite.” There would be no North Korean nuclear program, no North Korean missiles, and no North Korea. Jon S, a frequent contentions reader, has borrowed Lenin’s words and asked the critical question: “What is to be done?”

We must first properly understand the “correlation of forces,” if I may continue with Soviet-era lingo. In “China’s century” the general assumption is that the United States must step out of the way of the rising giant. After all, the argument goes, the central government in Beijing owns about $387 billion in U.S. Treasury obligations and holds the bulk of its $1.5 trillion in foreign exchange reserves in dollar-denominated assets. We cannot afford to irritate the Chinese, especially because they have already threatened to exercise the so-called “nuclear option” and dump their dollars. As Hillary Clinton asks, “How do you get tough on your banker?”

Clinton is wrong because she ignores the reality of the financial markets. If the Chinese sold their dollars, they would have to buy something, as a practical matter, euros and yen. The values of those currencies would then shoot through the ceiling. The Europeans and the Japanese, to bring their currencies back into alignment, would then have to buy dollars. In short, our debt would end up in the hands of our friends.

That 70′s Show

Fred Siegel 11.02.2007 - 3:37 PM

Director Jonathan Demme’s documentary on Jimmy Carter—Jimmy Carter Man from Plains—has been drawing dozens of the former President’s devotees to the theaters. The film couldn’t be better timed. What with the shock of skyrocketing oil prices, a feeling of political malaise, the renewed threat of Iranian extremism, and an economy that no longer conforms to tried and true assumptions, it’s starting to seem like the Carter years all over again. (As it did then, it feels now like we’re in a kidney stone of a period that will pass only with great difficulty.)

If you let your memory roam a bit during last Tuesday’s Democratic Party debate, you could, listening to Barack Obama (who is nearly as unctuous as Carter) speak of how only he could deal “honestly with the American people,” hear further echoes of the Carter era. Evidently, such honest dealings require the good will of the Iranian leadership. Carter reached out to Khomeini as “one man of God to another.” Obama, holding out the promise of membership for the Persian state in the World Trade Organization, says he too wants to “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran.

But it was John Edwards, like Carter a Southern liberal, who took the most Carter-like approach. President Carter spoke of the need to put aside “our inordinate fear of Communism.” A would-be President Edwards similarly complained that we have been “governed by fear” of terrorism; he promised to put an end to the “politics of fear.” Carter and his spokesmen, such as UN Ambassador Andrew Young, spoke insistently and repeatedly of the need to “restore America’s reputation.” Edwards also speaks about “restoring our good name” in the world.

Another Fundamental Mistake Involving Russia

Gordon G. Chang 10.21.2007 - 5:43 PM

Yesterday, Russia’s finance minister said that U.S. officials wanted to conclude discussions on the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization as quickly as possible. “I got the feeling that they are ready to push these negotiations forward,” noted Alexei Kudrin. Russia is the largest economy that is not a member of the global trading body.

And it should stay that way because the Russian Federation is not ready to trade fairly within the context of a rules-based system. For instance, last Wednesday, European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson again went public with complaints of Moscow’s violation of trade agreements with Brussels. Russia’s previous responses to European complaints have been to continue and even expand aggressive trade practices. For example, Moscow has indicated that it may extend its meat-and-plant ban, which it imposed on Poland almost two years ago.

There seems to be a general feeling in Washington and Brussels that Russia will somehow reform its bad practices once it becomes a WTO member. That sentiment mirrors American and European hopes and expectations regarding China at the end of last decade. Yet, as we have seen since Beijing’s accession in 2001, the Chinese have continued non-compliant trade practices. The United States has had to file five WTO cases against China; even with these complaints we have yet to scratch the surface of Chinese trade violations.

If the experience with China is any guide, Russia will change the WTO more than the WTO changes Russia. We will not be able to say that we were not warned. In June, President Vladimir Putin called for “the creation of a new architecture of international economic relations.” The question is why should we help him wreck pillar multilateral institutions, like the World Trade Organization, from the inside?

Free Trade on Planet Kristof

Gordon G. Chang 07.26.2007 - 3:40 PM

This morning, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof launched a full-throated—and empty-headed—defense of free trade. Along the way he praised President Bush and attacked Senators Clinton and Obama.

Their offense? The pair of presidential hopefuls engaged in “cowboy diplomacy” by co-sponsoring legislation that targets China for manipulating the value of its currency (he was referring to the bipartisan Baucus-Grassley-Schumer-Graham bill). The proposed legislation, in Kristof’s view, will antagonize the Chinese, politicize trade disputes, and betray President Clinton’s “outstanding legacy on economic issues.”

Outstanding legacy? There may be many magnificent aspects of Bill Clinton’s economic policies, but his strategy for dealing with the mercantilists in Beijing is not one of them. It was he, after all, who decided that China should be permitted to join the World Trade Organization without first reforming its currency regime. The Chinese, once admitted to the global trading body, pegged the renminbi and from July 2005 on have maintained a managed float. As a result, Middle Kingdom manufacturers have obtained an enormous price advantage, which has translated into outsized Chinese trade surpluses against the United States.

Rice’s China Correction

Gordon G. Chang 07.08.2007 - 8:15 PM

On Friday, Condoleezza Rice, in an interview on CNBC’s Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo, said “China doesn’t play fair” on trade, according to a transcript released by CNBC—or at least that is what she had said until the network issued a revised transcript. The new version of her remarks came out this way: “China could play fairer.” Dr. Rice apparently believes that Beijing is already something of a fair trader.

This depends on the definition of “fair.” Beijing keeps its currency undervalued by as much as 40 percent. It maintains the world’s largest array of manufacturing subsidies and permits the biggest ongoing theft in history, the piracy of foreign intellectual property. China continues its system of restrictions on foreign products and competitors, and consistently violates the promises it made in order to join the World Trade Organization. This, in Rice’s view, is “fair”?

One of the most important things that Rice can do in the remainder of her tenure is to get China policy right. She needs to formulate effective strategies to encourage Beijing to help solve problems around the world, not continue to make them worse. But she can’t do that if she won’t tell the truth about China. A good starting point would be to correct the correction of her CNBC remarks.

Will China Collapse?

Gordon G. Chang 05.22.2007 - 1:10 PM

My May 16 post, “Trade Showdown with China,” attracted a comment from one “Tongluren,” who asked, “Is this the same Gordon Chang that insisted that China will collapse in 2007?” It’s a fair question.

My first book, The Coming Collapse of China (2001), predicted that the Chinese Communist party would fall from power by the end of this decade, that is, by 2011 (not 2007). One of my principal arguments was that international commerce would remake Chinese society in ways that the country’s collective leadership—now composed of nine aging engineers who all favor blue suits and red ties—would not be able to handle.

Most people, like my new friend Tongluren, believe the Chinese one-party state is durable. If there is any consensus about China’s trajectory at this moment, it is that the Communist party will lead that nation to geopolitical and economic dominance in a few decades, perhaps sooner. “Resilient authoritarianism,” championed by Columbia University’s Andrew Nathan, is the latest intellectual flavor.

Trade Showdown with China

Gordon G. Chang 05.16.2007 - 9:32 AM

This month Beijing is sending one of its largest delegations ever to visit America. Headed by the “Iron Lady of China,” Vice Premier Wu Yi, the group will participate in the second round of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s Strategic Economic Dialogue, which begins in Washington next week.

In the last two weeks, Paulson has been trying to lower expectations for the upcoming discussions with the Chinese. That’s smart strategy. The first round of the dialogue, held in Beijing last December, was an abysmal failure. And the talks later this month are bound to be contentious: the Bush administration in March announced it would reverse decades of trade policy by imposing countervailing tariffs on products from non-market economies. The U.S. has also filed a series of World Trade Organization complaints against China: one in February and two more last month. The February case complains of nine discrete sets of manufacturing subsidies. The cases last month target both Chinese piracy of American intellectual property and China’s internal restrictions on the distribution of foreign films, music, books, and journals.

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