As trade negotiators meet in Doha, the House and Senate will be considering legislation to renew the President’s trade promotion authority.  Compared to such urgent matters before Congress as an emergency economic stimulus package and airport security legislation, a non-specific grant of trade negotiation authority looks out of place. But the trade bill might make a more durable contribution to American strength than anything else on the Congressional agenda.  Here’s why:

• A decisive vote affirming America’s confidence in our leadership of the global economy is crucial right now.  Terrorists attacked the symbols of our commercial and military power.  They are learning that American military might is undiminished.  It is essential that Congress demonstrate a confidence in our leadership of the global economy. The next meeting of the WTO must both dispel the lingering doubts left by Seattle and describe a way forward for the international trading system, which the United States established more than fifty years ago.  If the President and his trade negotiators have no writ to negotiate advances in world trade, the American commitment to open markets won’t be taken seriously.

• Trade negotiating authority sets the stage for a resurgence of export-led growth vital to any sustainable recovery.  More than a year ago, exports accounted for a significant part of U.S. GDP growth.  Now exports are at risk as our major trading partners face contraction. But American firms are lean, highly productive, and positioned to take advantage of resurgent services and goods exports that create the  highest quality jobs in this country.  If the policy environment is favorable and the U.S. government presses an agenda that opens access to the developing world’s rising middle classes, Americans are better positioned than our European or Asian competitors to lock in gains in these new markets that are crucial opportunities for the coming decade. 

• Trade promotion authority is essential to allow U.S. firms to take advantage of an unparalleled embrace of the open trading system by emerging economies, and to guide the process in ways that reflect our interests. The first step in the fifteen-year long U.S.-led effort to bring China into global trade rules has succeeded. Now Russia, Saudi Arabia, and more than twenty other economies in transformation are in line to sign on to WTO commitments.  The  leadership in each of those countries has made the bold move to join a rule-based system of international commerce, betting that it will improve the lives of their people and help these governments meet the expectations of emerging middle classes.  If the Congress fails to send a clear signal in support of America’s participation in that system, it rejects the ultimate victory over a Cold War mentality and the associated triumph of open markets and American capitalism.  

The events of September 11 reveal the weakness of the negative agenda pushed by isolationists and the anti-globalization lobby .  This crisis has created a prejudice among responsible nations in favor of cooperation and rule-based policies to deal with transnational threats. Certainly such a consensus is fragile and will come under stress as national agendas and domestic political priorities reassert themselves. This moment holds a rare promise, offering an organizing principle for international behavior that could extend beyond managing terrorism and create opportunities to build on shared economic interests. Such an opportunity might just give multilateralism a good name. 

But a rejection of trade negotiating authority now would come at a much higher price than the indifference which met the failed effort at the end of the Clinton Administration.  With unemployment growth at a twenty-year high and consumption under pressure since midyear, markets and exporters will not so easily shrug off a decision by Congress to repudiate America’s role in leading global trade liberalization. The Administration must make trade promotion authority a high priority and Congress should exercise its Constitutional power and support that goal. 

Legitimate concerns about labor rights and environmental responsibility can and should be addressed, and solutions are available in several of the current proposals.  Failure to support American trade leadership now could be remembered as the sign that Congress lost faith in our ability to compete, at the very moment when the rest of the world sought to sign on to the American values of a global trade system we created.