US Oil Production Will Help Us Regain International Prestige

President Obama has made it clear that he is no advocate of fossil fuels. He has gone to war against coal and refuses to allow drilling on most federal lands for oil. Despite this lack of support, the United States actually has a surplus of crude oil and natural gas. Domestic production is way up — to the point that gas prices at the pump has started to come down. There’s even talk of exporting gas and oil — something that has been restricted since the 1973 OPEC embargo. The United States has a new energy story to tell that lets us operate on the world stage from a position of strength instead of dependence on the shifting prices of foreign oil. A Wall Street Journal story noted that last week, “A delegate to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said... Read More

US Car Brands Take the Off Ramp in Korea

As an exporter, I am a big supporter of the South Korean Free Trade Agreement signed on March 15, 2012, because when we open up foreign markets to American goods, the resulting lower trade barriers and tariffs help make U.S. products more competitive. During a recent trip to Korea, a journey I have made countless times over the past 30 years, I couldn’t help but notice that I saw no American cars. This didn’t make any sense to me as we now have a free trade agreement in place. But after a little digging, I discovered that my eyes weren’t deceiving me. The Public Citizen website noted that since the trade deal was enacted, fewer than 1,000 additional U.S. automobiles have been sold in South Korea. Meanwhile, 1.3 million Korean cars were sold in the United States.... Read More

Shutting Down Future US Jobs

As usual, President Obama fails to think about long-term solutions to our economy. His role in the shutdown is one example, but a far more dangerous decision was his willingness to cancel his trip to Indonesia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit (APEC). The outcome of this decision could stop the creation of millions of good-paying American jobs. According to data from APEC, its members — including the United States and China, Russia, Mexico, Canada and 16 other countries — account for about 40 percent of the world’s population, 55 percent of global gross domestic product and about 44 percent of world trade. Trade within APEC has grown nearly sevenfold since 1989, topping $11 trillion in 2011. Opening up free trade to most of Asia would give the U.S. economy... Read More

Trade, Not War, Achieves Better Results

In my book, Conscientious Equity, I discuss that when nations have free trade agreements with each other, they historically have not gone to war. Once the road for negotiations is open to trade, it remains open for other serious considerations. Equally important is that free trade agreements not only benefit businesses, but a country’s entire population as well. Trade leads to economic freedom, which helps reduce poverty and corruption. So it was with great interest that I found a kindred spirit in Fred Smith, director of the Center for Advancing Capitalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In an article in Forbes, he noted: “The announcement of a possible free trade agreement between the world’s two largest economies — the United States and the European... Read More

Too Much War — Not Enough Trade

In my book, Conscientious Equity, I discuss the fact that when nations have free trade agreements with each other, they have historically not gone to war. Once the road for negotiations is open to trade, it remains open for other serious considerations. Equally important is that free trade agreements benefit not only businesses, but also a country’s entire population. Global trade leads to economic freedom, which helps address poverty and minimize corruption. So it was with great interest that I found a kindred spirit in Fred Smith, director of the Center for Advancing Capitalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. In an article for Forbes, he noted: “The announcement of a possible free trade agreement between the world’s two largest economies — the United... Read More

China: It’s Complicated

China’s relationship with the United States is increasingly complex and competitive, and it’s bound to get even more complex as China pursues an aggressive growth strategy. As Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Obama met last weekend in California to try and mend their often tenuous relationship, it was clear that China had its own agenda and this meeting was more show than a sincere desire for the two leaders to work together. While Obama resolved to address cyber security, particularly serious Internet hacking charges against China, Xi could barely suppress a smile knowing that National Security Agency leaker, Edward Snowden, was stowed away in Hong Kong. Snowden, arguably America’s biggest turncoat since Benedict Arnold, was now fair game for interrogation and revelations... Read More

Hurdles Facing Obama’s Plan To Double Exports in Five Years

As an exporter, I half-heartedly believed in President Obama’s proposal to double U.S. exports in five years. That pledge was made in his State of the Union address in 2010, which means the clock is ticking on his plan to double American exports from $1 trillion to $2 trillion by 2015. His National Export Initiative (NEI) was supposed to “help farmers and small businesses increase their exports.” At the core of this plan was the creation of an environment that allows American exporters to compete freely and fairly with other countries. To date, Obama has not initiated a single free-trade agreement, although he likes to take credit for the free-trade agreements signed with Panama, South Korea and Colombia, which were all initiated and negotiated by the previous administration. Obama... Read More

Better Late Than Never

As an exporter, I half-heartedly believed President Obama’s proposal to double U.S. exports in five years. That pledge was made in his State of the Union address in 2010, which means the clock is ticking on his plan to double American exports from $1 trillion to $2 trillion by 2015. His National Export Initiative (NEI) was supposed to “help farmers and small businesses increase their exports.” At the core of this plan was to create an environment that allows American exporters to compete freely and fairly with other countries. To date, Obama has not initiated a single free-trade agreement, although he likes to take credit for the free-trade agreements signed with Panama, South Korea and Colombia, which were all initiated and negotiated by the previous administration. Next... Read More

When Patents Are Stolen, so Are American Jobs

Ideas build nations. Great minds fueled the economies of nations as far back as the ancient Egyptians. Yet, after only a bit more than 200 years, America has become the world’s innovation leader. Small and medium-sized American companies generate the overwhelming percentage of this creativity, filing 13 more patents per employee than large corporations do. Meanwhile, the core copyright industries alone (not including the broader sector) lead all major industry sectors in U.S. exports and have grown three times faster than the overall economy in the past 20 years. Core copyright industries are those that create copyrighted works as their primary product, including motion pictures, music, software and publishing. Our intellectual property (IP) is in demand everywhere around the globe. Unfortunately,... Read More

Welcome to the Department of Global Commerce

Last week, President Barack Obama asked Congress for authority to close the Commerce Department and create a new export agency. 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... Read More