Press Releases 2005

For more information or to schedule an interview, members of the press should contact Laura Osio at losio@cato.org or (202) 789-5263.

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September 14, 2005

Dorgan Amendment Could Kill Doha

For nearly four years, the United States has been engaged in the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations. If completed in accordance with its objectives, Doha will provide unprecedented foreign market access openings for U.S. service industries, farmers, ranchers and manufacturers. The Doha Round represents the single greatest opportunity to expand U.S. business opportunities in more than a decade. If it fails there is unlikely to be comparable opportunities for years to come.

"Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) wants the Doha Round to fail," opined Daniel Ikenson, trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute. "Success will require, among other things, that the U.S. market be opened--ever so slightly--to foreign sugar. As a vocal advocate of heavily-subsidized, heavily-protected sugar interests, Dorgan has offered an amendment to the 2006 Department of Commerce and Related Agencies appropriations bill that, if passed, would poison and probably kill the Doha Round," Ikenson explained. His amendment would withhold funding from the U.S. Trade Representative's office to negotiate or enter into trade agreements that would modify or amend any of the U.S. trade laws.

"This amendment is highly irresponsible, short-sighted, opportunistic, and severely detrimental to U.S. economic interests and the conduct of U.S. trade and foreign policy. The Doha negotiations are a package deal. The United States hopes to open foreign agricultural, non-agricultural, and services markets. To achieve those goals, it must be willing to reform its agricultural and antidumping policies. With U.S. consent, the Doha agenda expressly requires negotiations on antidumping. Dorgan's amendment renders that requirement impossible to fulfill. Without antidumping negotiations, there will be no Doha Agreement, plain and simple," Ikenson concluded.

"If Senator Dorgan is unhappy with the final text of the Doha Agreement, should it come to fruition, he can vote against its passage. In the meantime, the wishes of Congress regarding trade negotiations were formally expressed in the Trade Act of 2002, which conveyed to the president the authority to negotiate trade agreements," explained Ikenson.

Interestingly, the appropriations bill to which Dorgan's amendment would be attached contains language that directs the USTR to conduct negotiations within the WTO to recognize the rights of members to distribute antidumping and countervailing duties collected by their governments as they see fit. "Of course, this mandate represents an effort to circumvent the WTO's verdict that the now infamous Byrd Amendment is violative of U.S. obligations within the WTO and should be repealed," offered Ikenson.

What is contradictory about Dorgan's amendment, therefore, is that it eviscerates any U.S. leverage to negotiate preservation of Byrd. Ikenson suggested, "If Byrd is to somehow be retrofitted into the WTO agreements (and it shouldn't; it should be repealed), the U.S. will undoubtedly have to negotiate substantial antidumping reform to win support from other members. Dorgan's amendment severs that artery."

For more information, please contact Dan Ikenson directly at (202) 218-4623 or dikenson@cato.org.

June 13, 2005

Yet More Border Enforcement Will Not Stop Illegal Immigration
Cato study recommends temporary visas

WASHINGTON - Despite increased enforcement at the U.S.-Mexican border beginning in the 1980s, the number of foreign-born workers entering the United States illegally each year has not diminished and will not without immigration reform, reports a study released today by the Cato Institute.

In the Cato Policy Analysis "Backfire at the Border: Why Enforcement without Legalization Cannot Stop Illegal Immigration," Princeton professor and Mexican migration expert Douglas S. Massey argues that America's repressive immigration and border policies have backfired, pushing immigration flows into more remote areas and resulting not only in a tripling of the death rate at the border, but also in a dramatic fall in the rate of apprehension. As a result, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of making one arrest along the border increased from $300 in 1992 to $1,700 in 2002 -- an increase of 467 percent in just a decade.

"Not only have U.S. policies failed to reduce the inflow of people from Mexico, they have perversely reduced the outflow to produce an unprecedented increase in the undocumented population of the United States," Massey writes. "America's unilateral effort to prevent a decades-old flow from continuing has paradoxically transformed a circular flow of Mexican workers into a settled population of families and dependents."

Massey recommends that Congress build on President Bush's immigration initiative to enact a temporary visa program that would allow workers from Canada, Mexico, and other countries to work in the United States without restriction for a certain limited time. Undocumented workers already in the United States who do not have a criminal record would be given temporary legal status.

In addition, he urges the U.S. government to accept the reality of a continent-wide integrated economy. While the U.S. government has pursued commercial integration through the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has sought to curb unilaterally the flow of labor across the U.S.-Mexican border.

Such a contradictory policy is bound to fail, says Massey. "In practical if not logical terms, it is impossible to create a single North American market characterized by the free movement of all factors of production except one," Massey writes. "The time is thus ripe for the United States to abandon its illusions and to accept the reality, indeed the necessity, of North American integration."

Trade Briefing no. 29 /pubs/briefs/tbp-029es.html

March 17, 2005

Bush Nominates Rob Portman U.S. Trade Representative
Portman generally supports free trade, but with some glaring exceptions

Congressman Rob Portman, who was nominated today by President Bush to be U.S. Trade Representative, was identified as one of 24 "Free Traders" in the House, in a study released this week by the Cato Institute. In the 108th Congress, Portman voted consistently against barriers and trade subsidies.

During his 12-year career in the House, Congressman Portman voted 74 percent of the time in favor of lower trade barriers, according to the study.

Daniel Griswold, author of the study and director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, offered these comments on the nomination:

Congressman Portman is a conventional, pro-trade Republican. He's voted in favor of trade on all the major bills--NAFTA, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, trade promotion authority, normal trade relations with China, and all the recent bilateral agreements. But he's strayed from the free-trade path on some important issues.

The biggest lapse in his free-trade record was his support for a steel import ban in 1998. On October 15, 1998, Portman voted in favor of a non-binding resolution calling for a one-year ban on steel imports. If such a ban had become law, it would have flouted international trade rules and devastated our domestic steel-using industries.

Then in November 2001, on the eve of the WTO meeting that launched the Doha round, Portman voted in favor of a resolution urging the president and then-USTR Robert Zoellick to 'preserve the ability of the U.S. to enforce its trade laws.' The resolution sent a disappointing message to the rest of the world that the United States will be reluctant to negotiate needed reforms of widely abused antidumping laws.

And like most Republicans, Portman has voted time and again to maintain America's four-decade-old embargo against Cuba despite its failure to change the Castro regime.

Dan Griswold is available for comment. You can view Portman's voting record on trade issues--along with the rest of the 108th Congress--in Griswold's comprehensive Congressional rating report, Free Trade, Free Markets: Rating the 108th Congress. Past Congressional trade vote ratings by Griswold are Free Trade, Free Markets: Rating the 107th Congress, Free Trade, Free Markets: Rating the 106th Congress, and Free Trade, Free Markets: Rating the 105th Congress.

March 16, 2005

Few Members of the 108th Congress Advocate Free Trade
Cato study finds only 49 members support trade without barriers or subsidies

Twenty-five House members fit the category of free trader in the Cato Institute's free trade ratings of the 108th Congress, released today. In the House, 22 Republicans and three Democrats opposed barriers and subsidies in more than two-thirds of the votes they cast, qualifying them as free traders. Another 157 House members voted as internationalists, 16 as interventionists and two as isolationists. The most consistent free trader was Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), with a 100 percent rating. Other reliable free traders were Michael Castle (R-Del.), Susan Davis (D-Calif.), Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). The partisan divide over trade in the House was noticeably smaller in the 108th Congress than it was in the previous Congress.

In the Senate, 24 members voted as free traders, 24 as internationalists, 15 as interventionists and none as isolationists. The rest had mixed records. The most consistent free traders were John Sununu (R-N.H.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). Voting on trade was a more partisan affair in the Senate than in the House. On average, Republican senators voted against trade barriers 71 percent of the time compared to 46 percent among democrats.

A more extended examination of "career" voting on trade since 1993 finds that the most consistent free traders were Rep. Jeff Flake and Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.).

In "Free Trade, Free Markets: Rating the 108th Congress," Daniel Griswold, director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, examines 23 key trade votes in the 108th Congress and finds that on the basis of their voting records, legislators can be classified into four categories: free traders, who oppose both trade barriers and subsidies; internationalists, who oppose barriers and support subsidies; isolationists, who support barriers and oppose subsidies; and interventionists, who support both barriers and subsidies.

"When weighing policy toward the international economy," Griswold concludes, "members of Congress do not need to choose between anti-trade, anti-subsidy isolationism and pro-trade, pro-subsidy internationalism. They can choose to vote for a coherent program to liberalize trade and eliminate subsidies--in sum, to let Americans enjoy the freedom and prosperity of a seamless free market undistorted by government intervention." The complete report contains detailed data on each congressman and senator, their respective votes, and the issues upon which they voted.

Trade Policy Analysis no. 28 /pubs/pas/tpa-028es.html

March 7, 2005

U.S. Dumping Policy Toward China
New Cato study asks if it's justified or gratuitous

As the U.S.-China trade relationship has evolved and bilateral trade and investment have soared, the potential for disputes has increased. One source of increasing bilateral tension is U.S. antidumping policy toward China. In his newest paper, "Non-Market Nonsense: U.S. Antidumping Policy Toward China," Cato trade policy analyst Daniel Ikenson gives the Bush administration generally high marks for its handling of America's trade relationship with China, but believes that the administration "should move now to remedy the serious blot on its record that antidumping policy represents."

An ever-increasing number of economic and strategic interests is vested in the harmony of trade relations between the United States and China. Yet in stark contrast to its broader restraint in the face of anti-China protectionist pressure, the Bush administration has adopted an unabashedly bellicose approach to China with respect to antidumping policy. "Between 2001 and 2004, China was the target of 32 U.S. antidumping investigations-one every 45 days," says Ikenson.

Defended as a tool necessary to redress unfair trade, the reality is that the antidumping law, as administered, "is incapable of distinguishing between unfair and fair trade," says Ikenson. "As a result, normal, unobjectionable, international trade, and the foreign and U.S. companies involved, are punished unjustly on a routine basis." And nowhere is the disregard for any semblance of due process more evident than where it concerns non-market-economy methodology, which Ikenson judges "needlessly provocative," with the potential to "undermine the administration's ability to encourage China to do better in other, more important areas, like intellectual property rights enforcement and services liberalization."

U.S. antidumping policy toward China is anachronistic, unfair, and inconsistent with the Bush administration's objective of making progress with China on issues that really matter. Ikenson states that "the administration should take a hard look at its antidumping policy toward China, particularly the DOC's absurd non-market economy methodology. An honest assessment will lead to the conclusion that U.S. antidumping policy is undermining the otherwise laudable efforts of the administration to keep the U.S.-China trade relationship on sound footing."

Trade Briefing no. 22 /pubs/briefs/tbp-022es.html

February 10, 2005

Cato Expert Speaks on Today's Trade Deficit Numbers
Dismisses anxiety over deficit's size

Washington--The Commerce Department today announced that the U.S. trade deficit hit a record high of $617.7 billion dollars in 2004. Dan Griswold, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, dismissed alarmist concerns about the size of the trade deficit. Said Griswold:

Despite anxieties about the trade deficit, today's trade report contains yet more good news for the U.S. economy. Americans are trading more with the rest of the world than ever before. U.S. exports in 2004 finally surpassed their previous peak of 2000, which should be welcome news to U.S. manufacturers that were hit hard by slumping demand abroad. And the rise in U.S. imports confirms the robust demand of U.S. consumers and businesses. We should remember that the record trade deficit of last year occurred in a year of strong growth in GDP, employment, and manufacturing output.

Dan Griswold is available for comment. For further reading on the benign nature of the trade deficit, see the following studies by Dan Griswold: "Bad News" on the Trade Deficit Often Means Good News on the Economy, America's Maligned and Misunderstood Trade Deficit, America's Record Trade Deficit: A Symbol of Economic Strength, and The U.S. Trade Deficit and Jobs: The Real Story.

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