Even school children understand that exports are critical to growing the nation’s economy and thereby increasing the number of jobs available to Americans. In his Jan 27, 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama reiterated the necessity of growing exports and promised to double them over the next five years with his National Export Initiative (NEI).
Excerpted from President Obama's speech on the National Export Initiative at the annual conference of the Export-Import Bank held in Washington, DC on March 11, 2010.
In a time when millions of Americans are out of work, boosting our exports is a short-term imperative. Our exports support millions of American jobs. You know this well. In 2008, we exported more than $1 trillion of manufactured goods, supporting more than one in five manufacturing jobs -– and those jobs, by the way, pay about 15 percent more than average. We led the world in service exports, which support 2.8 million jobs. We exported nearly $100 billion in agricultural goods. And every $1 billion increase in exports supports more than 6,000 additional jobs.
So it’s critical in the short term, but it’s also critical for our long-term prosperity. Ninety-five percent of the world’s customers and the world’s fastest-growing markets are outside our borders. We need to compete for those customers because other nations are competing for them.
So, after refusing for an entire year to bring three completed Bush trade agreements to the Senate, he told Americans how critical exports are to our economy and to our employment problem. He promised to double exports in five years. He then spent another 16 months refusing to bring the trade agreements to the Senate.
The primary reason for all of these delays was to attempt renegotiation of completed agreements for the purpose of political grandstanding with unions over the interests of the nation’s workers, including those in unions but especially those who are unemployed.
In May, the President announced that he was finally ready to bring trade agreements to the Senate for South Korea and then for Colombia and Panama. But at the last minute, the White House signed up for yet another union demand – further extending the Trade Adjustment Assistance program extensions that were part of the Stimulus package and expired at the end of 2010. Given the politics of the moment, including an angry populist House, that could easily scuttle the trade agreements yet again.
Who would benefit from that? According to the President, boosting exports is a short term imperative and one of the only things government can actually do to help the millions of unemployed. George Will says this:
President Obama is sacrificing economic growth and job creation in order to placate organized labor. And as the crisis of the welfare state deepens, he is trying to enlarge the entitlement system and exacerbate the entitlement mentality.
Obama and Free Trade: Appease Big Labor
By George F. Will, Washington Post, June 8, 2011
It is Democratic Party – and especially progressive – gospel that organized labor must be appeased, even if doing so injures other American workers or Americans who would be workers if government policies did not impede economic dynamism. Today, unions represent only 6.9 percent of the private-sector workforce.
What is the White House thinking? I do not believe that the President wants to exacerbate economic growth or unemployment and I certainly don’t believe that he’s stupid. I cannot see unions abandoning the President and the Party by staying home on Election Day, let alone by supporting Republicans. Yet the White House continues to work against the nation’s interests.
The President is simply incompetent and I am content to let others argue the reasons. Our job is to replace him.
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