"Trade makes the cake bigger so everyone can benefit.” So advised our distinguished visitor, British prime minister David Cameron, on the op-ed pages of the WallStreetJournal.
Well, not everyone—not the American worker who is displaced by exports, or the French film maker protected from competition by l’exception culturelle, or Europe’s farmers who can’t compete with America’s more efficient ones, or German manufacturers of solar panels who probably won’t survive even if the EU does slap a 68 percent tariff on Chinese imports. In short, the decision to extend free trade has losers as well as winners, the latter in this case the multinational companies that want restrictions on foreign investment in infrastructure relaxed, and consumers of the goods and services that might flow more freely across borders.
President Obama agreed to join Cameron in pushing for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that would cover about $1 trillion in world trade annually. The British prime minister is predicting “huge benefits,” although these would not be immediate in terms of impact on employment and economic growth. Dispassionate analysts believe the U.S. would benefit if the EU reduced regulation of services and allowed imports of genetically modified crops, and Europe would gain if the president could somehow force or persuade states to abandon buy-American policies. Europeans think a deal would boost their GDP by 0.52 percent (economists love decimal points) over the long term, or by €120 billion. Not peanuts, but hardly a game changer for the stumbling EU economies, now in the deepest post-war recession.
At the same time, Obama is attempting to negotiate a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as part of his “pivot” to Asia and, if truth be told, away from Europe. This would result in freer trade between countries on this side of the Pacific (U.S., Mexico, and Canada, among them) and several Asian countries, lately including Japan, a late but now enthusiastic player to the consternation of its highly protected farmers, U.S. auto makers stung by competition from Japanese makers, and, for different reasons, China.
Trade is never only about trade. Interest in TTIP stems in part from Obama’s desire to show that he is trying to stimulate exports and growth, and in part from European politicians’ desire to show that they can do more than squabble over the future economic architecture of the EU. As for TPP, Obama is hoping that closer economic ties will show our Asian allies that we are with them as they confront an increasingly aggressive and expansion-minded China. The Chinese regime claims America is trying to encircle it, which we are, and with reason.
There is a sense in which action on the trade front is designed to offset the (accurate) impression that America is reducing its involvement in world affairs, its footprint, in Washington jargon, and that the Western democracies are retreating in the face of an ascendant China and Vladimir Putin’s increasingly belligerent Russia. China continues to grow, more slowly than in the past but more rapidly than Western countries, and to increase its military’s reach. And it has found some Americans equivalent to the “useful idiots” who visited Stalin’s Soviet Union and proclaimed that socialism really works. One such is California governor Jerry Brown, who recently took a large entourage to China in search of infrastructure investment, contrasted the regime’s “dynamism” with our focus on process, and declared, “I want to be in the presence of people who build, who dream, who get shit done.” They certainly can do the latter. Just ask any dissident, if you can gain access to him or her.
The trade rivalry with China is due to intensify. Dev Ashish, an economist at Societe Generale, predicts that “The OECD will face stiffer competition from China in value-added manufacturing” as China shifts from low-end manufacturing. Ashish points out that “Asia (led by China) and oil-exporting countries substantially increased their value share of world exports” in the first decade of this century while “most advanced countries saw a sharp decline in their share of world exports.”
David Cameron leaves things late. Leadership by essay crisis, it has been called, a nod to procrastination by generations of students. But his belated response to the mounting political turmoil over Britain’s membership in the EU—a speech proposing an in/out referendum—won’t save him from disaster in the 2015 general election.
David Cameron leaves things late. Leadership by essay crisis, it has been called, a nod to procrastination by generations of students. But his belated response to the mounting political turmoil over Britain’s membership in the EU—a speech proposing an in/out referendum—won’t save him from disaster in the 2015 general election.
It’s always bloody Europe. It was Europe (specifically, Tory splits over Britain’s relationship with the EU) that finally did in Mrs. Thatcher, and it did in poor John Major too. Now it is beginning to look like David Cameron might eventually go the same way, felled by the issue he has tried to dodge since becoming party leader in 2005. To borrow his phrase from the following year, “banging on” about Brussels was over. Saving the planet was in.
It’s better to be lucky than good. So goes the old saw. It’s better still to be both lucky and good, which is what Britain’s new ambassador here in Washington seems to be.
On the occasion of the Official Visit, The President and Mrs. Obama gave the Prime Minister and Mrs. Cameron a one-of-a-kind Braten 1000 Series Grill hand made by Engelbrecht Grills and Cookers of Paxton, Illinois. Symbolizing the personal friendship between the President and Mrs. Obama and Prime Minister and Mrs. Cameron, the gift commemorates their May 2011 visit to 10 Downing Street where together they grilled and served food to American and British Armed Service Members.
London—Trying to return to Hackney, five minutes from the heart of the protests, from vacation on the night the rioting was at its fiercest provided an insight into the carnage engulfing London. The city had been transformed into a kind of Alan Moore dystopia. Sirens were deafening, with bright lights blinding. Train operators announced gravely that there had been “civil unrest” across London, and that some areas of the city were no longer safe.
The riots in the United Kingdom continue for a fourth straight day. On Tuesday, Londoners awoke to torched cars and street scuffles in Ealing, police horses lining up in Lewisham, and stores and residences in flames in Tottenham. Prosperous boroughs in the capital now resemble war zones, as mobs continue to overwhelm police and loot stores. In the last twenty-four hours, disorder has also spread to cities across England, including Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, and Nottingham.
For a politician whose previous career was in public relations, David Cameron cannot have picked a more polarizing subject, or less opportune time to address it, than his recent speech on the failure of state multiculturalism, which he delivered in early February at the Munich Security Conference. The British prime minister’s remarks happened to coincide with a mass rally in Luton led by the xenophobic English Defence League (EDL). Liberal commentators in Britain did not fail to notice the unfortunate overlap and everywhere detected a high-frequency Tory appeal to the far right.
“It could have been much worse.” That’s the line many of my British friends are putting forward about the cuts to the British defense budget announced by the new Tory government this past week. And they’re right.
Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land. They have won an election. I have told this to U.S. officials ... I do not accept Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think the same today. They are defending their land.
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