|
Dan Griswold discusses U.S.-Australia trade relations on ABC Business Breakfast.
November 6, 2002.
|
Emma Alberici: "Back to business -- while PM John Howard has so far spent most of his Washington visit talking about security issues, his most difficult discussions will revolve around trade. Australia's push for a free trade deal with the US was fuelled by an American ambassador earlier in the year. But the recent passage of the US Farm Bill, with its $300 billion worth of subsidies, appears to dash the hope of any meaningful trade agreement.
"To discuss the likelihood of a deal between the world's 14 biggest companies, I'm joined by Dan Griswold, trade analyst with the Cato Institute in Washington. Hello and thanks for joining us. Mr Griswold, welcome to Business Breakfast. The American ambassador gives the impression that Australia is very high on the US Government's trade agenda. Just where do we stand in the queue to do business with the Bush Administration?"
Dan Griswold, Trade Analyst, Cato Institute: "I think it would be a good thing if the United States and Australia could sign a free trade agreement, but unfortunately, there are a number of major hurdles to be crossed before that can happen. One, we need to have trade authority promotion passed and it's a pretty messy process. We need to avoid killer amendments like the anti-dumping exemptions.
"Secondly, there are a number of other agreements in the pipeline -- with Chile, with Singapore, the free trade areas of the Americans -- and finally, as you mentioned, the big issue of agriculture. And I'm afraid the US Farm Bill took the United States in the wrong direction. We could learn a lesson from Australia, where only 4 per cent of farm income is from subsidies. It's 21 per cent here in the United States and I'm afraid the Farm Bill took us in the wrong direction and undermined US leadership in this area."
Emma Alberici: "Given Australia's reliance on agricultural exports and the current climate of protectionism in the United States, how do you rate the prospect of any primary producers in Australia actually gaining access to the US market?"
Dan Griswold: "I think the chances are pretty small, certainly in the near and medium terms, through a free trade agreement directly between the United States and Australia. I think the best hope for Australian farmers, as for American farmers, would be through the World Trade Organisation and a successful completion of the Dohar round. That is the best chance out there. And again, unfortunately, the United States has given away its valuable bargaining chip -- it's leadership -- with this terrible Farm Bill."
Emma Alberici: "There is talk, isn't there, that the EU and Canada, and in fact, Australia, will take this issue, contesting the Farm Bill, at the World Trade Organisation level? What impact is that likely to have on the Bush Administration and their attitude towards this?"
Dan Griswold: "Well, the world trading rules on agriculture are ambiguous. There is a cap on US subsidies. So far the US spending has been underneath that cap. If low prices continue, the US could bump above that cap. But I think the US is vulnerable. If it isn't technically in violation of the WTO, this Farm Bill certainly shreds the spirit of the WTO, which is to move towards lower subsidies and more free trade in agriculture."
Emma Alberici: "Is Congress likely to allow any country, at all, let alone Australia, to be singled out from the Farm Bill, given some exception?"
Dan Griswold: "Well, that's the big issue and that's probably the single biggest hurdle with a free trade agreement with Australia's agriculture. If agriculture is not included, it is not worth signing. And yet you can see by the Farm Bill that the United States is very reluctant to come to terms with agriculture and free trade, and again, I think Australia has set a marvellous example for the United States and the rest of the world in getting farm subsidies under control."
Emma Alberici: "Isn't the real impediment to a free trade agreement with the United States, the fact that really, the United States stands to gain very little from it?"
Dan Griswold: "Well, I think Australia is an important trading partner of the United States, but, yes, it is pretty far down the list when you look at the trade the United States does with Canada or Europe or with Mexico. So the economic impact on the United States will always be small. But I think Ambassador Bob Zoellick, our trade representative, will want to sign an agreement with Australia for the symbolic purpose. I think any global trade talks need to have the leadership of the United States and Australia -- a free trade agreement would show the mutual purpose of that leadership."
Emma Alberici: "Thank you very much. We'll leave it there. Dan Griswald, trade analyst with the Cato Institute."
|
|
Brink Lindsey discusses steel tariffs on Cannon's Street Sweep.
August 22, 2002.
|
Cannon Host: "This is the 7th list of products that the US government has now excluded from the tariffs on steel. Is there any surprise?"
Brink Lindsey: "A little bit. Today the administration announced the exclusion of something like 178 specific products from the reach of the 30% tariffs announced last March. This now comes to a total of something over 700, or 727 product exclusions so far. What I think we're seeing is the administration's back peddling from the debacle of its decision to impose 30% tariffs."
Cannon Host: "Is the present tariff an unacceptable outcome for trade partners?"
Brink Lindsey: "It's still a raw deal but certainly this takes some of the sting out of it. I think the administration was genuinely blind-sighted by the ferocity of the negative reaction abroad. They shouldn't have been. They should have seen it coming, but they didn't. And it came as quite a rude awakening to them. Not only did our trading partners scream bloody murder and start threatening to impose retaliatory sanctions of their own but also steel users here in this country been crying fowl and have been complaining about steep price hikes and supply shortages and the need to let people go and to close down operations and businesses. And so I think the administration has seen both domestically and internationally some severely negative consequences of its earlier tariff decision and so has been poking holes in that decision to the extent possible."
Cannon Host: "Theoretically, with a tariff in place on steel, you've got people more employed in this country to produce more steel to compensate the fact that we're charging so much for imports. Why did that not happen and why was the steel industry against it?"
Brink Lindsey: "The steel industry certainly favored the tariffs, but the fact is for every steel producing job we have 50 steel using manufacturing jobs and so the impact of increasing steel prices and reducing steel availability really had a much more negative impact downstream than it had a positive impact upstream. Meanwhile the steel producing industry was already getting deliverance by a strengthening economy. The steel industry is very pro-cyclical - it goes into a slump when the economy's in a slump, it revs up when the economy is heating up; And with the coming out of recession at the end of 2001 beginning of this year, we would have already seen price recovery. This just really made it a double whammy to induce an artificial supply shortage at precisely the same time we would have gotten a big price hike from recovering demand anyway."
Cannon Host: "What needs to happen in the steel industry in order to make it competitive?"
Brink Lindsey: "It's a mixed industry. There are a number of producers in the US that are just basket-cases. They can barely hold on during boom times. They were doing poorly even during the glory days of the 1990's. They suffered a couple of shocks in the past few years. First, the Asian Crisis - a world wide supply glut and demand shortfall because of the Asian Crisis. And then of course the US recession in 2001. So coming out of that cyclical problem, we still see structural problems. We've got weak players - companies like Bethlehem and LTV -they just are poorly managed and have high costs. And unfortunately the tariffs exacerbate that problem because they keep weak players in the game that ought to get out and clear space for the companies that can really perform. So, far from solving the problem, tariffs and subsidies which we've been experiencing now for 3 straight decades, just perpetuate the problem."
|
|
Daniel Griswold discusses immigration on MSNBC.
May 29, 2002.
|
MSNBC Host: "Is this a tolerable situation?" (in reference to the border and the amount of illegal's getting in)
Daniel Griswold: "Well look, we don't know what happened down there; we don't know if they were Mexican soldiers. They may have been in pursuit of people in criminal activity. We just don't know. But one thing I do know; It is irresponsible to talk about this as some kind of act of war as one member of Congress did the other day. Look, we have real enemies out in this world - Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein. Mexico is not our enemy. The Mexican government, the Mexican people are not our enemies. We have a 2000 mile border with Mexico. We've never, probably never had better relations with the Mexican government than we do today with Vincente Fox. This is a calling out for cooperation, not confrontation."
MSNBC Host: "Doesn't [our porous border] pose all sorts of security problems?"
Daniel Griswold: "One of the problems we've had is that our immigration policy has been obsessed with catching Mexican construction workers and that has taken resources away from catching terrorists. We had 10 times the number of agents on the Mexican border before September 11th than we had on the Canadian border, even though terrorists tend to prefer the Canadian border. We need to drain this swamp, we need to legalize the flow of Mexican workers into the United States that would take away this underground network and make it more difficult for terrorists to get in to this country. And it would free up resources to go after people who want to blow up our buildings instead of going after people who want to help us build them."
In response to Dan Stein...
Daniel Griswold: "What happens is that we've been trying to nab construction workers and it's taking our attention away from terrorists. We passed a good border security bill in Congress that's doing the right things. It's going after people from terrorist countries that have links to terrorism, requiring tamper-proof documents, beefing up the border patrol. These are things we should be doing. Dan Stein has another agenda. And that is to keep out peaceful tourists, hardworking immigrants. There has been not one single act of terrorism committed by a Mexican coming in to the United States. They are coming here to work, to save, build a better life for their families. We should welcome these people and that will make the border easier to patrol because they will be coming in an orderly fashion, rather than creating these underground smuggling networks that are a result of our failed restrictionst policies."
MSNBC Host: "Don't we have to have control of the border before any regime of rule is going to make any difference?"
Daniel Griswold: "You know, think of Ellis Island. We basically had open borders for most of our history. But they came in through an orderly fashion through Ellis Island. We can have Mexican migrants come into this country to work. A lot of them not permanently - work for a year or two and then go back. But have them come in an orderly way a legal way, lets legalize the millions of Mexican workers who are here working, helping to build a stronger economy, lets legalize them so that we have a better idea of who's in the country, and then we can focus our resources on the terrorists."
|
