The Importance of Trade

Op-Ed

By Joe Pitts

If you were to go to a farm in Pakistan, you might see a New Holland tractor.

If you were to go to a corner store in China, you might be able to buy a Hershey's Lancaster candy bar.

Sikorski helicopters made in Coatesville are flown all around the world.

Pennsylvania steel and energy exports total billions of dollars each year.

Pennsylvanians are making products that the whole world wants.

However, government can find its way between people and their customers, between consumers and the goods they want to buy. Politicians like to set up barriers to trade for certain interest groups, to create or protect monopolies, or because they mistakenly believe that trade is bad. This may win some votes from the special interests and lobbyists, but it is bad law.

It is common sense to let Pennsylvanians buy what they want to buy, and sell what they want to sell where they want to sell it. While government, taxes, and regulations are emphatically not voluntary, trade is. People only trade with one another if it benefits them both. The more we let people trade, the more they benefit.

Americans make millions of transactions a day, and the modern economy just keeps getting more complicated. Politicians and bureaucrats can't keep up with the pace of change. They need to get out of the way and let people trade.

One out of every five jobs in the United States, around 38 million, depend upon trade. In Pennsylvania alone, 1.6 million jobs depend on trade. According to the U.S. Trade Representative, every additional billion dollars in American exported goods means 6,000 more American jobs. Every billion dollars of service exports supports more than 4,500 jobs.

Without customers, businesses fail, people lose their jobs, and families can lose their livelihood. Government restrictions on imports only forces Pennsylvanians either to buy goods they don't want, which usually means making them pay more. That is a waste of hard-earned money.

That is why both the House and the Senate Republican majorities are working with President Obama and his administration to expand opportunities for Americans buyers and sellers to trade around the world.

Expanding our trade has a bipartisan pedigree. The U.S. has 14 free trade agreements (FTAs) with 20 countries in law already. President Clinton signed legislation implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created the largest free trade zone on earth. NAFTA nearly tripled American exports to Mexico and Canada, contributing to the economic boom of the 1990s.

President Obama has signed FTAs with Colombia, Panama, and with South Korea, a country that, once very poor, now has a trillion-dollar economy, largely because of trade with other nations.

President Obama is negotiating another FTA, this time with Asian and Pacific nations that comprise over 800 million people, and 40% of the global economy.

Americans already export about $700 billion annually in goods to these markets, which is nearly half of all our exports. Pennsylvania exports around $18 billion annually in goods from 15,000 different companies to these markets, also nearly half of Pennsylvania's exports. The vast majority of these Pennsylvania companies are small businesses, who rely on these customers.

If this is how much Pennsylvanians are exporting now, just imagine what we could do if we made this trade easier.

As the President negotiates, Congress must stay involved, and must assert its rightful Constitutional authority over treaties. Congress can give the President Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and, if he does a poor job of reaching good, fair trade agreements, it can take it away.

In giving the President TPA, Congress gives instructions and conditions to the President on how to negotiate, and on our priorities. For this Congress, those instructions include ensuring respect for American intellectual property rights, and reserving the right of Congress to vote on any trade agreement the President makes. If Congress or the American people see a problem with the FTA, then we can and we will vote it down.

This year we have already found several areas of bipartisan cooperation with President Obama. I'm happy that trade--getting Pennsylvanians to their customers, and to the goods they want to buy--is yet another one of them.

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