Obama wants to put the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM), Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC), the Trade and Development Agency (TDA), the Small Business Administration (SBA) and parts of the Commerce Department under a new roof — something that has been kicked around for years.

As I point out in my book “Conscientious Equity,” we have created a bloated behemoth government infrastructure to manage our global trade relations that is uncompetitive and inefficient.

Our exporters aren’t getting the support they need to combat foreign governments that erode our access to markets by erecting insuperable barriers to our products and services while stealing our intellectual property with impunity.

Without the right government infrastructure to support our exporters, the U.S. is losing about eight million good paying jobs. You would think getting this right would be priority number one in our fight for jobs.

While at an event last April in Washington I handed to Lisa Brown, Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary (she had recently been appointed to a leadership role to guide the White House government reorganization team), a copy of “Conscientious Equity” and told her it contained the solutions to our global trade problems and provided a vision for America’s trade relations with the world.

A short while afterward, I received calls from her office to discuss the chapter “Creating a New Organization” which addresses the very crowded table created by our multitude of trade agencies. We had long discussions during which they appeared to be very receptive to my ideas. I was encouraged that the ship would be righted.

Unfortunately, last week, as the announcement of the Administration’s government reorganization plans were revealed, Obama only mentioned six agencies to be consolidated. This completely ignores at least 21 agencies with overlapping trade responsibilities. Each of these agencies is their own fiefdom complete with kings and queens, legions of workers and cavernous castles that seem to go on for miles.

The savings being projected by this consolidation would eliminate 1,000-2,000 jobs and $3 billion in overhead — a fraction of what it could be if they took bolder steps.

Although it is a step in the right direction, it is a timid step, and one anchored in politics. I am afraid this is only electioneering to show the president is a cost-cutting, bureaucracy buster. You can’t put lipstick on a pig.

It is time to get serious and move towards a comprehensive consolidation that sends an unmistakable signal to the world that global commerce will no longer be an afterthought for the U.S., and that we will stop relegating its management to a hodgepodge of government organizations.

That’s why it’s time to create The Department of Global Commerce, headed by a Secretary of Global Commerce who has extensive experience in international business. Then we must give this department the ultimate power in making trade policy recommendations to the president. All agencies focused today on commerce and trade would be consolidated into the Department of Global Commerce.

The role of the Secretary of Global Commerce would be substantially different from the current role of the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. This cabinet member would preside over all trade policy discussions.

The current Trade Policy Review Group and the Trade Policy Staff Committee are bureaucratic bodies that stand in the way of clarifying objectives.

The Secretary of Global Commerce would, of course, receive input from other departments and agencies, but he or she would outrank the heads of other departments in matters of global commerce.

This consolidation would free up billions of dollars, some of which could then be reinvested into the hiring of lawyers and other staff needed to do battle with our competitors in enforcing trade agreements and protecting our intellectual property.

This would cost the American taxpayer nothing, but would be a tremendous asset in opening foreign markets to American products and services, and helping American companies trade on a level playing field.

One would think that we might have considered this consolidation approach necessary around the time of the 1947 Marshall Plan (The European Recovery Program). Or at least tried to streamline our bureaucracy during the 1970s when we first started to amass a significant trade deficit.

As we have seen in national security matters, we are extremely slow to recognize that too many cooks in the kitchen turn out a lumpy and unsavory broth.

This new consolidation and emphasis on global commerce shouldn’t become an election gambit. It’s too vital to our economy. And even more vital to putting Americans back to work.

While Obama never fails to bend to the whims of American trade unions that see trade agreements as a threat instead of an opportunity, Colombia has rightfully lost patience with the U.S. This, after both countries originally signed the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in 2006 in a deal that once signified the preeminence of democracy and free enterprise.

The agreement would immediately create much needed well-paying U.S. jobs as tariffs on U.S. exports to Colombia would vanish overnight. Unfortunately, we continue to live in a time warp of protectionism and a destructive mentality.

Now a new vote on the Colombian Free Trade Agreement is coming, but the damage is done and we have given our competitors all the momentum while U.S. exporters have paid $3.5 billion in taxes to the Colombian government since the agreement was signed.

The upshot is Colombia has now signed free trade agreements with Canada and the European Union. Colombia’s legislature recently passed the Chinese Trade Promotion and Protection Bill, which will open the floodgates of trade with China.

If we don’t move quickly to end our indifference, Colombians will be buying Canadian wheat, not American. They will be buying European manufactured goods, not American. And they will be giving China another strategic and economically significant beach head on the South American continent.

But that’s not all; as Colombia has essentially given up on the U.S. as a reliable partner, there are reports they are in talks with South Korea, Turkey and Japan. South Korea? Oh yes, another country that has bent over backward to sign a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. but is also in limbo, along with Panama.

This defies explanation. Ninety-three percent of Colombian exports enter the United States duty-free whereas most of our exports are subjected to tariffs. Those beautiful cut flowers we import from Colombia came into the U.S. duty-free. The American fertilizer and tractors we send them to grow these flowers pay stiff tariffs.

The U.S. exported $9.5 billion to Colombia in 2009. With our competitors locking in their advantages, do you expect our exports to Colombia to increase? No way. And as the export numbers drop, so will U.S. employment figures.

In an interview published in a national business newspaper, Sergio Diaz–Granados, Colombia’s trade minister, is quoted as saying: “We’ve been talking about a U.S.-Colombia free trade deal for 20 years, and it’s certainly the trade deal we want more than any other…but we have to continue working in other directions.”

If you keep telling your fiancee that you love her, but jilt her at the altar over 20 years, that relationship is in deep trouble. My concern is even if we finally get this agreement ratified the ill-will we have created and the momentum we have given our competitors will be hard to overcome.

South America is a market with enormous potential, as once unstable governments have created a sound economic structure that has led to a growing middle class and a favorable business environment. Is it any wonder that China and other countries have a keen eye on this region? Meanwhile, the U.S. government is sitting idle while trade opportunities abound.

What happened to Obama’s pledge to double U.S. exports in five years? This is a pipe dream when you start delaying trade agreements that eliminate tariffs on U.S. products. When U.S. goods cost more than that of our competitors, foreign consumers will simply stop buying U.S. goods. Nothing too complicated to understand about that.

The U.S. is running out of friends and running out of markets. Instead of strengthening relationships with our traditional trade partners; we are keeping them at arm’s length. The Obama administration’s solution is to ignore old friends while attempting to make new friends out of sworn enemies. As we have seen repeatedly over the past few years, this is a non-starter.

There’s an old expression that you “leave with the person that brung you to the dance.” It is time we take this advice to heart.

Another lost friend. Another lost opportunity. Another lost job for a family that desperately needs something to believe in.

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Any time the U.S. enjoys a trade surplus, that’s good news good news for job creation and job retention.

The biggest threat to the U.S. would be the closure of the Suez Canal, which is largely controlled by Egypt. Oil tankers unable to sail through the Suez Canal would have to be diverted around the southern tip of Africa. Shipping costs would skyrocket not only for oil but for any goods that are shipped through the Suez Canal. This would raise both U.S. export and import costs.

An unstable Egypt would hit U.S. agricultural exports to Egypt hard, especially in the export of poultry and grains. Tariff instability has always been a problem in Egypt, but instability would cause U.S. prices in Egypt to soar. For example, most key U.S. agricultural product exports to Egypt now enter at tariffs of 5 percent or lower; however, a number of processed food products face tariff rates ranging from 20 percent to 30 percent. In 2006, the tariff rate on poultry was reduced from 32 percent to zero percent, but in 2007, the government imposed a 30 percent tariff, which remains in place today. This could climb even higher if a new Egyptian government takes power.

As we have seen in the past with political upheavals, there is a flight of capital outside the country. As a result of shrinking revenue governments cut spending while increasing tariffs and other barriers to trade to choke off imports.

At one time, the U.S. and Egypt were pursuing a free trade agreement that would have eliminated most tariffs placed on U.S. goods flowing to Egypt. It would have been a boom for both our nations. It is now unlikely that such an agreement will be signed for a very long time. That’s bad news for the U.S. and bad news for Egypt. A stable Egypt is a better trade partner for the U.S.and for the world.

While this gets positive world attention, behind the scenes China erects no such policies when it comes to their exports to the United States. The manipulation of their currency, the Yuan, gives them a tremendous advantage over US produced goods. In every way this helps China establish “unfairly low prices” which has become a pillar of their global trade policies.

They also conveniently ignore the theft of US intellectual property. For example the Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimates that seventy-nine percent of PC software installed in China in 2009 was pirated. The commercial value of stolen software in China last year was $7.6 billion, double the value of software stolen in China just four years ago. According to the US Department of Commerce China is responsible for more than $300 billion of intellectual property theft each year from the US. The sad thing is much of their theft is directly against American small businesses and entrepreneurs who are the least capable to defend themselves. China is content to remain silent on this.

Then while they try to appease the US by putting some half-hearted pressure on North Korea, at the same time they have started production of a stealth-jet fighter plane that signals a significant build-up of their military. They announced this just days before US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was scheduled to meet with Chinese officials about military cooperation. China doesn’t appear to be too worried or concerned about our reaction to this ratcheting up of competition leading to possible confrontation.

I think we all agree that having good relations with China is important, but we have to hold them to a behavior that conforms with sound international trade and security policies. We have to keep our eyes on the shells as they move them about or we will lose much more than a shell game.

At one time, Western nations treated China like a poor stepchild, even going to the point of illicitly providing opium to its citizens enabling a terrible addiction. After President Obama’s recent Asian debacle, China now treats the US like the poor stepchild. Now it is America that is hooked on the sinister drug of Morphine Economics and it is largely China providing the US the drug that is making us weaker each day.

Here’s an historical perspective.

Low demand for British goods in China and high demand for Chinese goods such as silk and tea in Britain during the 17th century forced the British traders to purchase these products with silver and gold, the only currency accepted by the Chinese. The British quickly began accumulating a large trade deficit that it could not sustain. They needed to find an economic substitute for the silver and gold, but one that would come with greatly reduced prices. The solution although illegal, was to begin smuggling opium into China from the plentiful poppy fields of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Despite Emperor Qing’s prohibition of importing opium to China, it wasn’t long before Chinese society, including government officials, became addicted to the opium, from which morphine is derived.

Raw opium contains some twenty different alkaloids of which morphine is one. It affects the central nervous system. It also impairs mental and physical performance, relieves fear and anxiety, and produces euphoria. Morphine’s euphoric effect is highly addictive. Tolerance (the need for higher and higher doses to maintain the same effect) and the physical and physiological dependence develop quickly. The malevolent outcome of morphine addiction is that it masks any underlying health problems, so while someone may actually be dying, the euphoria deadens the pain until the person succumbs to the disease.

This addiction to opium in China ultimately lead to the Opium Wars with the British Empire from 1839-1842 and from 1856-1860. China was routed in both of these wars. Britain forced upon a feeble China the Treaty of Nanjing and the Treaty of Tianjin, more commonly referred to us the Unequal Treaties. The British gained extraterritorial rights including its settlement in Shanghai and the ceding of Hong Kong Island from which to freely operate its trading activities, including the unrestricted importation of opium.

Several other countries including France, Germany, Russia and Japan demanded from China and received similar arrangements. The humiliation and sentiments caused by the unequal treaties eventually lead to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 and ultimately the end of dynastic rule. China had fallen so low from the heights of one of the greatest empires every assembled to being prostate before the hated foreigners in just 40 years. It is one of the most rapid declines of any empire in the history of world, and largely attributed to the opium which caused China to sacrifice its dignity and pride.

China’s addiction erased centuries of glory and unleashed a thirty year revolution. It allowed for things like the Rape of Nanjing, the communist takeover in 1949 and purges of the Cultural Revolution to take place. By its end, it created the conditions where China’s citizens lived under foreign sovereignty in its own country.

You could say that China’s downfall could be attributed to “Morphine Economics.” If you study China’s sad history throughout the 19th and 20th centuries you can certainly understand their distrust of the West. China has passed through decades that no great nation should ever have to tolerate. China’s addiction should have served as a cold, stark warning.

Yet while Morphine Economics ended in China, another nation fell under its deadly spell: The United States of America. As the economy eroded, the US began accumulating mountains of debt. It had become our morphine. We borrow money to pay debts today, unfazed by the legacy of the debt that we will face down the road. The euphoria of appearing to have the economy under control masks the worthless “vapor paper” currency that is being printed to stave off an economic collapse.

The ultimate irony of course, is that while the US is being crushed by its runaway debt, it is being bought up by China — a nation that innately understands the perils of Morphine Economics. The world has come full circle. Now China assumes the role of senior partner with the US – a humiliation of our own making.

I think Emperor Qianlong, from wherever he rests with his ancestors, gets no satisfaction from seeing a mighty nation make the same mistakes he did. It is up to us to learn the lesson and reverse our dependence on Morphine Economics before it causes irreparable damage to the economic health of our country and that of our future generations.

What we learn is that once human beings started exchanging things, “they stumbled upon divisions of labor in which specialization led to mutually beneficial collective knowledge.” Ideas fed other ideas and new products and services were created. The greatest inventions of the world could only happen when innovators traveled to tap into new thinking.

It is what happens when entrepreneurs recognize that product innovation and global exports

are interconnected. In my book, Conscientious Equity, I built on the theme of innovation to include the benefits of positive social change that accrues when nations freely trade with each other. This underscores the importance of Free Trade Agreements. Imagine the creativity that could emerge if all of us are allowed to play our part in the most momentous innovation of the human species: trade.