Manufacturing Export Growth in Need of FTAs, Legislation, Say Lawmakers, Witnesses
The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Reauthorization Act will provide U.S. manufacturing reliable and lawful access to global supply chains and inputs and boost U.S. manufacturing trade, said Senate Finance Committee ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in a July 17 statement at a committee hearing. The Customs reauthorization legislation would make trade facilitation and intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement priorities at CBP, he said. Congress has hit a persistent impasse on Customs Reauthorization measures in recent years (see 14062720).
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Lawmakers also should secure Trade Promotion Authority as quickly as possible into order to complete pending free trade agreements (FTAs), such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, said Hatch. Hatch co-sponsored the introduction of the only TPA bill on the table in this Congress (see 14011013). The bill “calls for an end to the theft of U.S. intellectual property by foreign governments, including piracy and the theft of trade secrets, and for the elimination of measures that require U.S. companies to locate their intellectual property abroad in return for market access,” said Hatch. TPA has little chance of passing prior to the mid-term elections in November, say observers (see 14032429).
Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on the administration and Congress to produce trade agreements that remove manufacturing barriers abroad, such as high-tech tariffs, factory relocation requirements, IP theft and support for state-owned enterprises. U.S. manufacturing continues to grow, and total manufacturing is up 2 percent from 2012, said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in a fact sheet released on the day of the hearing. The U.S. recorded $1.4 trillion in manufacturing exports, up 2.4 percent from 2012, USTR added.
But the resurgence in U.S. manufacturing isn't unexpected given the economic recovery in the wake of recent economic and financial crises, said witness Stephen Ezell, senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in written testimony. The 650,000 manufacturing jobs added in the U.S. since the end of 2010 “barely recover one-tenth of U.S. manufacturing job losses from the 2000s,” said Ezell. “When one excludes the U.S. computer and electronics sector (again, because government data overstates this sector’s output), U.S. manufacturing value added has still not recovered from the Great Recession, and in 2012 remained 7.4 percent below 2007 levels.” Ezell pressed the committee to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, conclude pending FTAs and expand the World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement in order to further boost the recovery efforts.