Trading Away Our Livelihood

There is no shortage of bad ideas about which to harp when it comes to discussing the sequester. It was a shot in the foot with an elephant gun. I've talked about - and suffered through - the more popular talking points about the sequester. Thank you, Congress, for an extra five hours in Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

As bad as all that is, today I read something truly pitiful: American trade is suffering because of cuts of as low as $5-8 million to The Office of United States Trade Representative. This bureaucratic leviathan has lost the money it needs to pay for overseas flights for trade negotiators, and as a result important trade deals may not get done. As boring as this seems, it has huge economic implications.

Right now, the United States is working on big free trade deals with the European Union and Pacific Rim countries. These deals could create huge economic opportunities for US exporters, but guess what...our negotiators can't fly to the meetings...that's worth repeating: the planet's wealthiest country cannot afford $8 million to send trade negotiators to meetings.

This is the state in which we find ourselves; the proponents of capitalism, the evangelists of free trade sidelined by budget cuts that are economically incompatible with the system we created and perfected (eh...perfected...?). We find ourselves in a position in which we cannot take advantage of the system we helped create and spread to the rest of the world because of action steps we took that are antithetical to that system.

I've said enough about the sequester, and any and everyone I know who has a basic understanding of economics and has thought about this issue agrees the sequester is a disaster, but that we can't fly our trade representatives to international meetings over a sum as low as $8 million is just pitiful. With all due respect, we're not Lesotho or Tajikistan here. We are the apostle for free trade, but we won't be engaging in as much of it over $8 million worth of airline expenses. Can't we get the Gates Foundation to fund this? Seriously, America? That America has been self-induced into this debacle is worth one more rant because it is unbelievably pathetic.

I titled this post "Trading Away Our Livelihood," but in fact, we aren't going to be doing nearly as much trading because we can't get our political act together. In fact, only recently, Ben Bernake again told Congress that they were the biggest obstacle to economic growth. Clearly, since they have, in their wisdom, grounded our trade negotiators over $8 million in public spending. Face-palm, fail, sigh. America needs fixing, and I'm unsure if anyone is up to the task.