A Make-or-Break Test for the World Trade Organization

Back in 2019, I released this video to explain how the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been a net plus, helping to lower trade taxes and other barriers to cross-border commerce.

I’m normally not a fan of international bureaucracies. But, unlike entities such as the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the WTO has a good track record.

Ever since it was created, trade taxes have been falling.

Sadly, though, the WTO has been weakened in recent years. Trump bears some of the blame, to be sure, but other politicians (including Biden) have caused problems because of their protectionist policies.

Foreign politicians also are pushing in the wrong direction. For instance, the European Union may be about to trigger a global trade war by pushing for carbon protectionism.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that this could be an opportunity for a reinvigorated WTO. As reported by Reuters, India will be bringing a case to block the EU’s anti-trade scheme.

Indian plans to file a complaint to the World Trade Organisation over the European Union’s proposal to impose 20% to 35% tariffs on imports of high-carbon goods like steel, iron ore and cement from India, top government and industry sources said. …”In the name of environment protection, EU is introducing a trade barrier that would hit not only Indian exports but also of many other developing countries,” said a top government official with direct knowledge of the matter. The government was planning to file a complaint to the WTO against the EU’s unilateral decision and would seek relief for exporters, particularly small companies, the official said without disclosing further details. India sees the proposed levy as discriminatory and a trade barrier.

Some people may point out that India’s government is very bad on trade, and that’s true. But the fact that Indian politicians are hypocrites does not mean the EU’s protectionism is justified.

Blocking the EU’s awful plan is an opportunity for the WTO to reclaim its role as a protector of the interests of taxpayers and consumers.

Fingers crossed, the world needs free trade!

P.S. Today’s column is about how the WTO hopefully can stop something bad. Unfortunately, I don’t think the organization has the ability to push for anything good. If there is any progress in the future, it will probably come from bilateral and plurilateral free trade agreements.

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Equality, Efficiency, and Trade

When I was first learning about economics in the 1970s and 1980s, Arthur Okun’s equality-efficiency tradeoff was part of just about any discussion of public policy.

Folks on the left acknowledged that their policies would lead to less prosperity, but they argued that result was acceptable because the benefits of a more-equal society would offset the cost of reduced economic output.

Needless to say, there were vigorous debates about how much additional equality could be achieved and how much economic damage might be caused by any particular policy, but few if any economists pretended that more government was actually good for growth.

Unfortunately, that has changed. A growing number of people on the left (especially those with tax-free jobs at international bureaucracies) now claim that bigger government actually is the way to get more growth.

Here’s their theory.

This illogical hypothesis is so absurd and so anti-empirical that I now get excited when I find economists who still use Okun’s framework when analyzing various reforms.

For instance, there is a new study from the European Central Bank that looks at whether a pro-growth policy (free trade) leads to less equality.

The working paper, authored by Roland Beck, Virginia Di Nino, and Livio Stracca, specifically measures the impact of membership in so-called “globalisation clubs.”

The mounting criticisms against globalisation…have sparked a lively debate about whether the narrative of the benefits of free trade and capital flows is still intact. …In this paper, we reconsider the effects of globalisation on income and inequality studying the consequences of quasi-natural experiments like accessions to “Globalisation Clubs”. …Our list of Globalisation Clubs includes the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which all require their members to pursue some form of either liberal trade or investment policies or a combination of both. …The main purpose of our study is to shed light on the hypothesis that globalisation leads to an efficiency-equity trade-off which is a fundamental concern in economics dating at least back to Okun (1975). In other words, is the hypothesis that globalisation increases economic efficiency to the detriment of cohesion and equality supported by the data?

Here are the key results.

The analysis leads to three main findings. First, with the exception of financial liberalisation we find that all our “globalisation shocks” lead to a significant increase in trade openness – a prerequisite for considering them globalisation shocks in the first place. Second, the effects on per capita income are mixed; positive for WTO accessions and trade openness shocks, insignificant for OECD accessions and even negative for EU accessions and financial liberalisations. …Finally, we find little evidence that globalisation shocks lead to more inequality. The Gini coefficients (market and net) tend not to change or even to fall, and the labour share of income to be unchanged or even rise, in the wake of a globalisation shock.Taken together, our results point to mostly positive effects for countries following globalisation shocks and challenge the view that globalisation is necessarily an efficiency-equity trade-off.

I’m not surprised by these findings.

There’s no reason to think that OECD membership will lead to better policy and there are good reasons to think EU membership might push policy in the wrong direction.

The WTO, by contrast, has a good track record of trade liberalization. So these results from the study make sense.

The primary takeaway from this research is that free trade is good for prosperity. Not only does it lead to more growth, but low-income people enjoy above-average gains.

Though I would argue that free trade would be just as desirable if rich people were the ones who enjoyed above-average gains. The key point is that all groups benefit when there are reforms to shrink the size and scope of government, and we shouldn’t get worked up if some people benefit more than others.

But there’s a secondary takeaway. This European Central Bank study also is an example of methodologically sound research (i.e., recognizing that more government is not a free lunch).

P.S. While I applaud the honesty of left-leaning economists who use Okun’s framework, that doesn’t stop me from criticizing some of their crazy conclusions.

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Hopes and Fears for 2021

Yesterday was my review of the best and worst policy developments in 2020.

Today, I’ll share my hopes and fears for 2021.

These are not predictions (economists have a terrible track record when try to make forecasts). Instead, these are merely good and bad things that might plausibly happen.

We’ll start with the positives.

Gridlock – I don’t necessarily think Biden is a hard-core leftist, but his fiscal agenda is terrible. I want him to have an excuse to put those policies on the back burner, and that will happen if Republicans control the Senate and we have “gridlock.” Simply stated, I’d rather nothing happen in Washington than have bad things happen. By the way, I’ll openly admit to being a hypocrite on this issue. At some point, I hope there will be a White House and a Congress that want to reform the tax code and fix entitlements. When that happens, I won’t want any obstacles.

Supreme Court tosses civil asset forfeiture – I’m recycling this item from last year because I’m hopeful that it’s just a matter of time before the Justices toss out this wretched policy that literally allows government to steal property from people who have not been convicted of any crime, or even charged with any wrongdoing.

Trade liberalization – To be charitable, Trump was a disaster on trade. Biden almost certainly will move policy in the right direction, including a restoration of the World Trade Organization‘s ability to settle disputes.

I used to list the collapse of Venezuela’s totalitarian government as one of my annual hopes and I still think that will happen, hopefully sooner rather than later. That being said, I’m getting a superstitious feeling that I’m jinxing regime change since I’ve listed that hope the past three years and it hasn’t happened.

Now let’s look at the negatives.

Absence of gridlock, leading to big anti-growth tax increases – If Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia in a few days, that will give them control of the Senate, which will dramatically increase the danger that Biden will push his class-warfare tax policies.

Re-regulation – Trump did not have a perfect track record on red tape (coal subsidies, property rights, Fannie/Freddie, for instance), but there was a net shift in the right direction during his four years. Biden almost certainly will impose more intervention. Indeed, I’m not aware of a single regulatory issue where he’s on the right side. So don’t get your hopes up for better showerheads and dishwashers.

Kamala Harris becomes president – The Vice President-Elect staked out policies far to the left of Biden when she ran for president. And she has a reprehensible track record of trampling rights when she was California’s top cop. That’s an unsavory combination. If she’s even half as bad as her rhetoric, we all should wish Biden good health for the next four years.

P.S. If you want to see hope and fears for previous years, here are my thoughts for 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017.

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The WTO Should Be Preserved, but Bilateral Free-Trade Pacts Are the Way Forward for Future Liberalization

Last year, I released this video to help explain why the World Trade Organization has been a good deal for the United States.

My argument was – and still is – very straightforward, and it’s based on two simple propositions.

1. Free trade is good because societies are more prosperous with free markets and open competition.
2. The WTO has helped nations move in that direction by reducing import taxes and other trade barriers.

This outcome is particularly beneficial for the United States since other countries tend to be more protectionist.

But not everyone agrees with this position.

President Trump is a notorious critic of the WTO, for instance, which isn’t surprising since he doesn’t understand trade.

There are also plenty of opponents on the left, which also isn’t surprising since they don’t like capitalism and competition.

What is somewhat surprising, however, is that some Republican lawmakers also have decided to oppose the WTO.

In a column last week for the New York Times, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri actually argued that it’s time to get rid of the World Trade Organization. Here’s his argument against the Geneva-based body.

The global economic system as we know it is a relic; it requires reform, top to bottom. We should begin with one of its leading institutions, the World Trade Organization. We should abolish it. …Its mandate was to promote free trade, but the organization instead allowed some nations to maintain trade barriers and protectionist workarounds, like China, while preventing others from defending themselves, like the United States. …Meanwhile, the W.T.O. required American workers to compete against Chinese forced labor but did next to nothing to stop Chinese theft of American intellectual property and products. …too many jobs left America’s borders for elsewhere. As factories closed, workers suffered, from small towns to the urban core. …Enough is enough. The W.T.O. should be abolished, and along with it, the new model global economy. The quest to turn the world into a liberal order of democracies was always misguided.

And here’s what he wants as a replacement.

The only sure way to confront the single greatest threat to American security in the 21st century, Chinese imperialism, is to rebuild the U.S. economy and to build up the American worker. And that means reforming the global economic system. …The United States must seek new arrangements and new rules, in concert with other free nations, to restore America’s economic sovereignty and allow this country to practice again the capitalism that made it strong. …For nearly 50 years before the W.T.O.’s founding, the United States and its allies maintained a network of reciprocal trade that protected our national interests and the nation’s workers. We can do it again …It means striking trade deals that are truly mutual and truly beneficial for America and walking away when they are not. It means building a new network of trusted friends and partners to resist Chinese economic imperialism.

Since Hawley doesn’t seem to appreciate the benefits of trade, the simple approach would be to criticize him for wanting politicians and bureaucrats to have the power to interfere with voluntary exchange across borders.

Such criticism is warranted, of course, but I want to take this opportunity to make four points about how there may be hope for the future.

1. Hawley is actually endorsing the status quo. After World War II, the US took the lead in creating the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT), a multilateral system of agreements which produced successive rounds of trade liberalization. The US then took the lead in creating the WTO so there would be a system (dispute resolution) to encourage nations to comply with their GATT commitments. But the dispute resolution process is now toothless because there are no longer enough judges for the system to operate (Trump has blocked the appointment of new judges). For all intents and purposes, the world is now operating under the pre-WTO rules – which seems to be what Hawley is calling for in his column.

2. The WTO no longer is a vehicle for global trade liberalization. The WTO is a consensus-based organization, which means unanimity is required for additional GATT-style reductions in global trade barriers. But since membership has expanded to include a number of countries with a protectionist mindset (most notably India, but China and Brazil also are a problem), it’s extremely unlikely that we’ll ever see another multilateral agreement for additional tariff reductions. This doesn’t change the fact that GATT was a big past success, and it doesn’t change the fact that it would be nice if the WTO’s dispute-resolution mechanism was back in operation. It simply means that we won’t be able to build on that progress.

3. Hawley is also endorsing, practically speaking, the best path forward. Another round of multilateral trade liberalization is off the table, but that doesn’t prevent nations from moving forward with bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs are consistent with WTO rules). Interestingly, Hawley seems to support that approach. The U.S. already has nearly 20 of these pacts and is engaged in major negotiations with the United Kingdom for a new FTA that hopefully will be a template for future FTAs with other market-friendly nations.

4. Beware of the regulatory-harmonization wolf in FTA clothes. While bilateral trade pacts are desirable, it’s important to pay attention to the fine print. The European Union wants to hijack FTAs and make them vehicles for regulatory harmonization (meaning other nations have to agree to the EU’s onerous approach to red tape). If the goal is to have more trade, more competition, and more dynamism, the United States and other pro-market countries should make “mutual recognition” the foundation of future free-trade pacts.

The bottom line is that Hawley is wrong about the WTO, but he may actually be right about the best way of achieving future trade liberalization. Assuming, of course, that he actually means what he wrote about striking new deals.

In an ideal world, needless to say, these new bilateral FTAs (or even multi-nation FTAs) should be in addition to the WTO.

P.S. An under-appreciated aspect of the WTO is that it gives nations like the US a more-effective way of pressuring China to eliminate subsidies and other trade-distorting practices.

P.P.S. I’m normally very skeptical of international organizations. But the WTO encourages globalization rather than global governance, a key distinction.

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The “Opportunity Cost” of Trump’s Underwhelming Trade Deal with China

Because of Trump’s poor grasp of trade issues, I warned at the end of July that trade negotiations with China might yield “something gimmicky (like purchasing X tons of soybeans or importing Y number of cars).”

Well, Trump announced an agreement yesterday and I can pat myself of the back for being prescient.

The New York Times reports on the meager features of the purported deal.

President Trump said Friday that the United States had reached an interim deal with China… If completed, …Mr. Trump said the “substantial” agreement would involve China buying $40 billion to $50 billion worth of American agricultural products annually, along with guidelines on how it manages its currency, the renminbi. …The deal is far from the type of comprehensive agreement Mr. Trump has been pushing for, and it leaves some of the administration’s biggest concerns about China’s economic practices unresolved. …Mr. Trump’s defenders say China’s concessions will generate positive momentum for future talks… Mr. Trump and his advisers also did not mention any progress in areas that the American business community has identified as critical to its ability to compete with Chinese companies — including China’s subsidization of industries, the role of the government in the economy.

There are two things worth noting, one of them a minor point and the other a major point.

The minor point is that an agreement to buy $40-$50 billion of agricultural products is managed trade rather than free trade. Consumers in a competitive market should be determining how much is being purchased, not politicians.

The major point is that the Trump Administration has been following the wrong strategy. After nearly three years of bluster against China, we have a deal that is anemic at best. Just imagine, by contrast, where we would be if Trump had joined with our allies and used the World Trade Organization to go after China’s mercantilist policies. We’d be in much better shape today.

And with none of the collateral damage that Trump’s tariffs have caused for American farmers, exporters, consumers, manufacturers, and taxpayers!

To use a bit of economic jargon, failing to utilize the WTO is an “opportunity cost” – an approach that we overlooked and neglected because Trump preferred a trade war.

By the way, I realize that there are some people who viscerally oppose the WTO. I hope they can be persuaded to change their minds. But if that’s impossible, I want to point out that Trump’s approach is wrong even for those who advocate U.S. unilateralism.

There are things that the United States could do that specifically target China’s anti-market policies.

For instance, James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, shares an exchange he had with Claude Barfield.

…there’s an alternative to the sweeping protectionism of the populists and progressives. …here is a podcast exchange from last April between AEI trade expert Claude Barfield and myself: Pethokoukis: As far as the enforcement mechanism, should the stick be tariffs? Should we be going after individual Chinese companies that we feel are breaking these rules, that are engaged in tech IP theft? What should be the punitive aspect? Barfield: In terms of intellectual property, if a Chinese company is found having participated in some sort of theft or — and here we have to be more vigilant in following this ourselves — using some technology or system that they’ve stolen, I would ban them from the US market. I would ban them and I would go after them in capital markets around the world. If the Chinese, for instance, continue to refuse to allow real competition and particular sectors are closed off for investment, I would ban the Chinese companies here and again, I would go after them in capital markets. In other words, I think it’s the investment side that is more productive and from the beginning has always been more productive, for me, than the tariffs.

And Derek Scissors, also from AEI, outlines additional options.

…there are many available actions which are more focused and, often, stronger than tariffs. But the Trump administration has neglected them… China’s centrally-controlled state-owned enterprises are very large and never allowed to fail due to commercial competition — the ultimate subsidy. It is thus impossible for the US to achieve balanced market access, much less free trade. …Chinese enterprises are not accidental recipients of protection from competition… These activities are orchestrated by the state. …The last step is what, exactly, to do. There are…many options.

Here’s the table he put together.

The bottom line is that there are plenty of tools available to specifically target anti-market interventionism (subsidies, cronyism, theft, etc) by China. Including options that are too onerous, or perhaps even not compliant with our WTO obligations.

Not that any of that matters. Trump wrongly thinks the bilateral trade deficit (i.e., investment surplus) with China is the problem. So we’ve wasted almost three years with a bad strategy, hurt the U.S. economy, and failed to get pro-market reforms in China.

P.S. If successful, the right approach (i.e., using the WTO or unilateralism to go after China’s anti-market policies) would produce benefits for America, and it would produce even greater benefits for China.

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The World Trade Organization Is Good News for American Taxpayers, Consumers, and Businesses

Earlier this year, I shared a short video about the benefits of the World Trade Organization.

Here’s a more substantive version (though still only four minutes).

I wanted to keep the video short, so I focused primarily on how the United States disproportionately benefits because other nations are pressured to reduce their trade taxes down to American levels.

Though I also pointed out that all countries benefit as global trade increases.

This is particularly relevant when you ponder President Trump’s trade spat with China. Yes, it would be good for the United States if China liberalized its economy and got rid of its mercantilist policies.

But it also would be good for China.

That’s why free trade is a good idea. It’s good if it’s unilateral free trade. It’s good if it’s bilateral free trade. And it’s good if it’s multilateral free trade.

Since we’re discussing the WTO, let’s look at some scholarly evidence.

An article by three Stanford political scientists for International Organization finds that the WTO has been beneficial for global trade.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been touted as premier examples of international institutions, but few studies have offered empirical proof. This article comprehensively evaluates the effects of the GATT/WTO and other trade agreements since World War II. Our analysis is organized around two factors: institutional standing and institutional embeddedness. We show that many countries had rights and obligations, or institutional standing, in the GATT/WTO even though they were not formal members of the agreement. We also expand the analysis to include a range of other commercial agreements that were embedded with the GATT/WTO. Using data on dyadic trade since 1946, we demonstrate that the GATT/WTO substantially increased trade for countries with institutional standing, and that other embedded agreements had similarly positive effects. Moreover, our evidence suggests that international trade agreements have complemented, rather than undercut, each other.

Meanwhile, a French think tank looks at some of the evidence in favor of the WTO’s rules-based approach to reducing trade taxes.

…the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which held a dominant position after WWII with its multilateral rules has lost influence…. From the point of view of a consumer or producer, the higher volatility of trade policy is nothing positive. …Handely and Limao (2015), Handley (2014), Pelc (2013) as well as Bacchetta and Piermartini (2011) also find empirical support for welfare gains from a rules compliant trade policy. …After WWII the average level of tariffs decreased constantly and predictably as part of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and its successor the WTO, which are based on member commitment and reciprocity. …multilateral agreements such as the WTO offer mechanisms which provide incentives even for mercantilist politicians to reduce barriers of trade.

Here’s a chart from the study, which shows how trade taxes have been falling in the post-World War II era.

In other words, the WTO process has been successful. President Trump’s tactic of escalating tariffs, by contrast, has not worked.

By way of background, the WTO is actually nothing more than a dispute-resolution forum for the GATT system (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) that was created back in the late 1940s.

And, unlike the International Monetary Fund or Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, this is a part of the “post-war order” that’s worth preserving.

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The World Trade Organization Advances American Prosperity

Time for the final installment in my four-part video series on trade-related topics.

• Part I focused on the irrelevance of trade balances.
• Part II looked at specialization and comparative advantage.
• Part III explained trade and creative destruction.

Here’s Part IV, which looks at the very positive role of the World Trade Organization.

My basic argument is that it is a good idea to get other nations to reduce trade barriers, but tit-for-tat protectionism is not the right approach.

As I explained when writing about Chinese mercantilism, the U.S. would have far more success by using the WTO.

Let’s look at what experts have said.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Greg Rushford explained why the WTO is good for the United States.

President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall successfully pressed America’s war allies to create the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade more than 70 years ago. Leaders across the globe, mindful of how economic nationalism in the 1930s had contributed to the devastation of World War II, wanted to open the world up again. The agreement focused on slashing of tariffs and other barriers to trade—bringing unprecedented prosperity to hundreds of millions of people. The GATT, which evolved into the World Trade Organization in 1995, became the world’s most successful international economic experiment. …Despite Mr. Trump’s assertion that the WTO has been “a disaster” for the U.S., Washington has won 85% of the 117 WTO cases it has brought against foreign trading partners. Japan complained in 2003 that WTO jurists had stretched the law by determining that Japanese health officials used phony science to ban American apples. The real U.S. gripe is that foreign governments have won most of the 145 cases that they have brought against American protectionist policies. …Both political parties would be well-advised to consider the wisdom of Truman and Marshall. They understood that true national-security imperatives meant resisting protectionism.

And here’s some more background information from a column in the WSJ by James Bacchus, who served as both a Member of Congress and as a Chief Judge at the WTO.

…let’s say Mr. Trump managed to get his way and pull the U.S. out of the WTO. The consequences for the world and U.S. economies would be immense. Among them: diminished trade growth, costly market and supply-chain disruptions, and the destruction of jobs and profits, especially in import- and export-dependent U.S. industries. The resulting trade barriers would compel some American companies either to downsize or move offshore. The global economic spiral set in motion by Mr. Trump’s reckless trade actions on steel, aluminum, Canada, Mexico, China, and Europe would accelerate. …WTO membership provides goods and services produced in the U.S. with protection against discrimination in foreign markets. Nondiscrimination rules are the heart of the WTO trading system, which currently applies in 164 countries and to 98% of all global commerce. …Instead of waging war on the WTO, the U.S. should help modernize it by making it more effective in addressing digital trade, services, subsidies, sustainability and intellectual property. Internationally agreed rules for international trade—and a process for resolving disputes about those rules—are an indispensable pillar of national prosperity.

I agree with everything in both columns.

And I’ll add one very simple – and hopefully very powerful – point.

Here’s a chart from the WTO showing that the United States is one of the world’s most pro-trade nations, with average tariffs of only 3.48 percent. Not as good as Hong Kong (0.0 percent) or Singapore (0.1 percent), but definitely good compared to most other nations.

In other words, it would be good if we could convince other nations to lower their trade barriers to our level.

Yet that’s exactly what’s been happening thanks to the WTO (and GATT, the predecessor pact). Here’s a chart prepared by the Confederation of British Industry, which shows how trade barriers have been continuously dropping. And dropping most rapidly in other nations, which is something Trump should be happy about.

The bottom line is that the WTO unambiguously advances U.S. interests, as I noted in the conclusion of the video.

But it actually advances the interests of all nations by gradually reducing global barriers to trade.

Is it as good as unilateral free trade? No, but it is a big win-win for America and the rest of the world.

Which is why, despite my usual disdain for international bureaucracies, I’m a big fan of the WTO.

Addendum: The original one-minute video no longer exists and has been replaced by a longer video that covers the same material in greater detail.

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