Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, displayed such deep concern for the U.S. constitution in proposing their successful amendment to the pending trade authority bill that they deserve an award.
However, an Oscar would be the most appropriate recognition for their efforts. Their expressed concern for preserving Congress’ constitutional prerogatives is clearly part of an act to cover a more fundamental motive.
They simply want to stop U.S. participation in future trade negotiations. Their amendment is merely an instrument to render the president’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy and negotiate treaties fruitless with regard to trade.
The world economy in general, and U.S. consumers in particular, will be hurt if they succeed.
The argument isn’t about whether international trade should be free or banned. Trade has always been restricted in some way, and while trade has grown significantly in recent decades, many restrictions remain, even on the part of the United States, which likes to style itself as a paragon of trade freedom.
Rather, the question is whether there will be movement in the direction of freer trade or whether any change will be toward greater restriction, as usually occurs in the absence of international bargaining.
Before World War II, most trade negotiations were between pairs of nations. The great innovation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was to move trade negotiations into a multilateral setting. Changes in trade laws affect more than one trading partner for any nation, and conducting talks among all the nations concerned is efficient and saves time.
But other countries are wary of bargaining with the United States because of its peculiar form of democracy. Even though some nations have titular presidents with varying levels of duties, virtually all other industrialized countries are parliamentary democracies.
In parliamentary systems, whichever party or coalition of parties has a majority in parliament holds the prime ministership and cabinet positions. When such a parliamentary government negotiates a treaty, it can count on automatic ratification in the parliament, its legislative branch.
The United States has a president who may come from one party and two houses of Congress that may be dominated by majorities from different parties. The current situation of a Republican President and a Democratic-majority Senate has been common in the last half-century.
Other countries are reluctant to bargain with the United States unless the U.S. representatives at the talks have some assurance that their Congress won’t attempt to alter the terms of any deal. They realize that any deal must be ratified for it to go into effect. They can accept a yes-or-no vote, but don’t want to waste time in thrashing out any careful compromise that will be picked apart in Washington.
The United States has a bad reputation for unilateralism, and the U.S. Congress has a bad reputation for willfully undercutting the foreign policy programs of Republican and Democratic presidents alike. There’s nothing immoral or unconstitutional about this, but it puts other nations on their guard.
The solution has been for Congress to grant the president “fast track authority.” Congress passes a bill giving the president power to negotiate and stipulating that it will either accept or reject any deal that results, but promises to not alter any details.
There is nothing remotely unconstitutional about this. It’s a simple recognition of the reality that some important issues are so politically delicate that the national good depends on Congress voluntarily insulating itself from the details.
Congress has delegated its daily control over the money supply to the Federal Reserve System for very similar reasons. The Fed is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. It was created by Congress and could be eliminated by Congress.
Similarly, closing unneeded military bases is good for the country, but no congressman can support closing one in his own district. The solution was to form “base closing commissions” to recommend lists of facilities to close. In setting up these commissions, Congress bound itself to accepting or rejecting the eventual list as a whole, but agreed not to mess with details.
I, like most economists, strongly believe that increased trade in recent decades has been good overall for the U.S. economy, U.S. workers and U.S. consumers. Trade restrictions clearly hurt the poor more than the rich. Obviously, many elected officials disagree.
In a democracy, the side that wins voter opinions eventually carries the day. That will happen in this case. But voters need to be aware that the Dayton-Craig amendment is about whether serious trade talks will occur or not, and not about some constitutional issue.
© 2002 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.