Where Was Obama's Economic Leadership?

During last year’s campaign, my favorite pessimistic Republican, Bucky Katt of Get Fuzzy told his owner Rob (a Democrat) that “your guy [Obama] puts the demo in Democrat.” We saw that in Trinidad last weekend at the Summit of the Americas, where the President missed a huge opportunity to show global leadership on trade.

The final communiqué of the Summit of the Americas has this to say on trade (paragraph 14):

We recognize the positive contribution of trade among our nations to the promotion of growth, employment and development. We will therefore continue to insist on an open, transparent and rules-based multilateral trading system. We further recognize the need for all our peoples to benefit from the increased opportunities and welfare gains that the multilateral trading system generates.

That and Paragraph 22, which mentions a “balance of rights and obligations” in discussing intellectual property rights. That’s it.

The version of President Obama’s address that the White House put out for the general public has lots on Cuba, but nothing on trade. In the full version, the word “trade” is used only once, in a reference to the “drug trade.” (The “Speeches” section of whitehouse.gov stops at February 27, so don’t look there. You have to look under “Official Remarks,” which is below “Official Statements” to find documents such as this and the speech on Obama’s visit to Mexico. The joint press conference with President Calderón had some references to “free and fair trade,” “free trade,” and even a promise to try to find a solution on the Mexican trucking issue that has now led to retaliation against American exports, but trade didn’t seem to be a major emphasis.

Nothing, therefore, on the US-Peru, US-Panama, or US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements, to say nothing of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. Granted, a number of Latin American countries probably didn’t want a reference to FTAA, but the President could at least have spoken of “our efforts to expand bilateral trade, even as we work to complete the Doha Development Round,” or something like that.

Instead, in the Summit communiqué, “multilateral trading system” may be read as “no more US bilateral free trade agreements.” Instead, the focus – both in the coverage and apparently in the events – was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, an antagonist of the United States. Welcome attempts to present the United States as an equal partner led to someone else stealing the show – someone who is leading his country down a dangerous path of socialist economics, harassment of the opposition, and restricted freedom for ordinary Venezuelans.

An alternative foreign policy at the Summit would have focused on pumping up America’s friends: certainly Calderón, also Uribe of Colombia, some of the Central American leaders, and among the center-left, highlighting the roles of Bachelet of Chile and most prominently Lula of Brazil. If they tried to do this, it certainly didn’t come through in the coverage of the event.

But just a few short weeks ago, at the G-20 meeting in London, promoting trade and opposing protectionism were all the rage. According to a piece by Guy Dinmore and Marco Pasqua in the March 30 Financial Times, the G-20 leaders were to pledge that: “We are determined to restore growth now, resist protectionism and reform our markets and institutions for the future.” In the global context, the leaders were naturally focused on the Doha Round of global trade talks rather than bilateral efforts, but the point is that the leaders understood that freer trade is a crucial step to get out of the economic crisis.

At the time of the G-20 Summit, President Lula da Silva of Brazil was quoted in the April 1 Financial Times as saying, “I compare protectionism to a drug. Why do people use drugs? Because they are in crisis and they think the drug will help them. But its effects pass quickly.”

Where was that at the summit? Could the U.S. have built on that anti-protectionist sentiment rather than focusing on Cuba? Why didn’t President Obama show global leadership by carrying the pro-trade message from the G-20 Summit to the Summit of the Americas? Did they think people would not notice the connection between the two? Or were they just overwhelmed by the need to respond to the daily issue?

On the other hand, perhaps all playing down of trade by the U.S. in Port of Spain wasn’t an omission. They could be serious. They may really think that playing down bilateral trade is somehow going to help the hemispheric economy – or at least Obama’s political fortunes at home. Perhaps they think that if he’d lose in Congress anyway, a push for free trade agreements isn’t worth the political capital.

That’s worse and more frightening.