U.S. trade strategy a failure

The Sept. 23 Forum editorial on trade agreements was interesting but needs some additional facts.

The question isn't whether we engage in international trade. The question is how we engage in international trade. What are the rules?

I'm for trade and plenty of it. North Dakota needs to find a foreign home for a substantial amount of its agricultural production. We are a major agricultural state, and we need export markets to grow.

The Commerce Department released a report, cited by The Forum, that shows we are exporting more, and that's good news. What is overlooked, however, is that while our exports are increasing, our imports are increasing much, much more.

An example would be trade with China. The Commerce Department will highlight that in the past six years, our exports to China increased by nearly $40 billion. That's true. But what they don't highlight is that our imports from China increased by $180 billion, more than four times the amount of export growth over the same period. That is why we have a ballooning trade deficit that hurts our country.

The Commerce Department is pushing free trade agreements as a solution to our trade problems. But the evidence doesn't support their position.

Of the top 24 export markets for North Dakota, the United States has a free trade agreement with only four of them. In fact, our average export growth in 2006 was actually slightly greater for the 21 countries with which we do not have a formal trade agreement than for those with which we have a free trade agreement. It makes me wonder what our negotiators accomplished in those free trade agreements.

I support trade agreements that are mutually beneficial, but I don't support agreements when I believe they shortchange our national interests.

The Forum's editorial mentioned a number of specific trade agreements, including the recently negotiated trade agreement with South Korea, as having substantial merit.

The Koreans have a long record of keeping many of their markets closed to us despite trade deals we have made with them. We've signed previous trade deals with Koreans and yet they still fail to really open up their markets.

Take for example, bilateral trade in automobiles.

Ninety-nine percent of the cars on the road in Korea are made in Korea. That's the way the government of Korea wants it. Last year, Korea exported 695,134 Korean cars to the United States. Yet, we were only able to sell 5,732 American cars in the Korean marketplace. That's not the result of consumer preference. It's because the Korean government found ways to restrict U.S. automobile sales in their marketplace even while they shipped us their cars to be sold here.

If we are going to do a new trade agreement with Korea, it seems to me we would push to fix that unfairness, but the proposed new trade agreement does not.

So, here's my position. I believe our country benefits from expanded trade. I'm just tired of our trade policy being little more than soft headed foreign policy, and our producers should not be shut out of foreign markets, even as we open the door wide to our market for foreign producers to enter.

Trade agreements need to be fair to our country and our producers. When they meet that test, I support them.

Too many of our trade agreements are based on a failed strategy that has left us with a

$758 billion yearly trade deficit

and with countries like China and Japan holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our currency as a result of that trade imbalance.

North Dakotans and all Americans deserve better than that.

Dorgan, D-N.D., is chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee and sits on six subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee.

U.S. trade strategy a failure By Byron Dorgan 20071007