In a recent policy report, the Democratic Leadership Committee proposes the following for U.S. trade policy:
3. Revive Trade Enforcement. Many of America’s major trade interests, finally, are already covered by WTO agreements. These include intellectual property rights, subsidies, market access for manufactured goods, and fair treatment for farm products. The first Clinton administration helped defend our rights and secure these interests—and in the process, strengthened public support for open-market policies—through 66 WTO cases which opened markets in India, won market access for high-tech exporters in Europe, and so on.
The Bush administration, arguing that we cannot litigate our way into foreign markets, has made enforcement a secondary focus of trade policy and filed only 19 WTO cases—even as foreigners filed 46 cases against the United States in farm policy, trade remedies, and many other areas. Meanwhile, compliance failures have worsened. Intellectual-property piracy and counterfeiting in China, for example, remain a commercial threat and are now a public-health hazard, spreading counterfeit medicines and consumer goods to many poor countries and sometimes America too. The effect has been to weaken America’s ability to protect its rights in trade, and convince much of the American public that trade agreements create obligations for the United States and rights for foreigners. The next administration must reinvigorate enforcement, appointing an ambassador-level trade enforcement chief to oversee case filings and protect American rights, and making much more frequent use of WTO dispute settlement rights in priority areas.
I think I've talked about this issue before. The raw numbers do show a big decline in WTO complaints from the Clinton to the Bush administrations. The report says there were 66 cases under Clinton and 19 under Bush. Our figures show 68 under Clinton and 22 under Bush. (The different numbers are probably the result of some minor methodological difference.) That certainly is a big decline. However, over the same period, complaints by other WTO Members declined as well. For example, based on our figures, the EU went from 55 in the Clinton era to 23 in the Bush era; India went from 11 in the Clinton era to 6 in the Bush era; and Japan went from 9 in the Clinton era to 4 in the Bush era. So, there may be more to this than just the different trade policies of Democratic and Republican administrations.
Having said that, I do think that, as a general matter, the Democrats are more likely to bring trade complaints than are the Republicans.
