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Volume 17, Issue 40
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
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Senators Disagree on Efforts to Increase Exports
At a Feb. 23 Senate Finance Committee hearing on trade and tax issues relating to small business job creation, the committee’s senior leaders differed somewhat on how best to achieve President Obama’s goal of increasing exports in order to boost domestic employment. Committee Chairman Max Baucus highlighted the administration’s plan to facilitate exports by small and medium-sized enterprises, but Ranking Member Charles Grassley said this effort should be broader in scope.
In his opening statement, Baucus emphasized that “within the private sector, small businesses are the principle [sic] engine of job creation,” having generated two-thirds of new jobs over the past 15 years. He noted that many federal agencies already conduct programs proven to help small businesses “navigate the confusing and costly road to exporting” and that lawmakers “must ensure that these agencies have the resources that they need to boost American exports and to create American jobs.” In doing so, Baucus said, Congress must develop policies that “provide immediate relief,” are “fiscally responsible” and “create the most jobs at the least cost to the taxpayer.”
James Sanford, newly-designated assistant U.S. trade representative for small business, market access and industrial competitiveness, echoed Baucus’ remarks. “Small businesses that export tend to grow even faster, create more jobs, and pay higher wages than small businesses that do not,” Sanford said. As a result, the Obama administration’s objective is “to both increase the number of small and medium-sized businesses that export and to expand the number of markets and customers served by the SMEs that do export.” To this end, USTR:
• is working to reduce trade obstacles such as unnecessarily complex and/or costly foreign standards and regulations, a lack of transparency in some markets and burdensome customs procedures;
• will, as part of the negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, have a point person for SME issues and consistently emphasize the needs of smaller businesses alongside traditional negotiation topics;
• is seeking to establish working groups to facilitate expanded SME trade opportunities with existing free trade agreement partners; and
• will look to use the fact-finding and consultation mechanisms built into bilateral and regional FTAs to help SMEs increase trade opportunities and confront trade barriers.
Sen. Grassley, however, said he was “skeptical of forced distinctions among the beneficiaries of trade.” While SMEs may have specific resource constraints to contend with in seeking export sales, he said, no U.S. business will be internationally competitive in the face of tariff and non-tariff barriers to U.S. exports. Reducing and eliminating such barriers should therefore be “our top priority,” and “the most effective and proven means” of doing this “is through the negotiation and implementation of trade liberalizing agreements among nations.”
In this context, Grassley criticized the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders for being “unwilling” to advance the pending FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. Sanford responded that the administration is continuing to work to address outstanding concerns regarding these FTAs, noting that they “offer valuable export promotion opportunities for SMEs” and that their approval and implementation “is an important priority in the Administration’s export promotion agenda.”
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