Thirty six percent of American college grads could not name all three branches of the U.S. government, according to a survey that was released last November by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The grads also flunked their basic economics. Asked about the role of international trade in a nation’s economy, only 47.5 percent of the graduates answered correctly that trade leads to “an increase in a nation’s productivity.” Twenty percent of those respondents said that they believed that trade “decreases a nation’s economic growth in the long term.” Joe College “appears to be economically illiterate,” concluded the Wilmington, Delaware-based non-profit organization that has been measuring US political and economic literacy since 1953.

If the American public is increasingly economically illiterate, what about some of the nation’s most prominent journalists who report the news that Americans rely upon to form their opinions? Journalists like CNN’s Lou Dobbs, and Louis Uchitelle, a veteran reporter at the New York Times. Recently, both Lou’s passed along uncritically to their respective journalistic audiences some PR spin that is part of an ongoing Buy American campaign sponsored by the United Steelworkers of America. It is not surprising, of course, that Lou Dobbs was happy to pass along the union’s spin without really checking it out. Buy American is what the tub-thumping cable television anchor sees as his journalistic market niche (even though he majored in economics at Harvard). But when a senior reporter for the New York Times, one of the world’s great newspapers, soberly informs his readers that the insular-looking Steelworkers have long “endorsed” free trade, and have not really fought imports of steel in recent decades, that’s another matter. Saying that the Steelworkers are not advocates of protectionism is perhaps the journalistic equivalent of reporting that boxer Mike Tyson has always been known for his sweet disposition.

Had either Dobbs or Uchitelle done what journalists are supposed to do — be skeptical of PR spin, dig a little to get the broader context, and for business reporters especially, understand the basic economics — they would have discovered that the story’s broader context illustrated the benefits of trade and investment to the US economy, not just the perceived downside.

Here’s the story, first as reported by the New York Times and CNN, and then the missing context that undermines it.

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The World Trade Organization’s general council quietly announced last week that its 153 member countries had agreed to hold a full ministerial conference at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. Mario Matus, Chile’s ambassador to the WTO, who chairs the general council, explained when the council met on May 26 that the WTO’s rules call for such ministerial meetings every two years, but that it had been nearly four years since the last formal ministerial meetings were held in Hong Kong in Nov/Dec. 2005. This will be a “regular” ministerial conference, Matus said. “I would like to stress the word ‘regular,’ as it has also become clear that this Conference is not intended to be a negotiating session — the DDA are on a separate track.” [DDA is the acronym for the so-called Doha Development Round of multilateral negotiations aimed at slashing tariffs and subsidies]

Talk about a looming PR disaster. Maybe Matus and other diplomats who are stationed in Geneva are naive enough to believe that WTO watchers will fall for the diplomatic doublespeak. Certainly, the hordes of journalists who will be swarming to Geneva to cover the ministerial meetings will be looking for only one piece of hard news: will the Doha negotiations succeed, or won’t they? After all, it was only last December that WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy announced that he would not call ministers to Geneva unless it appeared that a Doha deal was likely to be struck. Reporters have long memories for such contradictions. The Doha negotiations, which have dragged on since 2001, are by far, the most important business before the WTO — a fact that simply can’t be explained away by the general council. If the ministerial meetings conclude on Dec. 3 without convincing evidence of seriousness about successfully concluding the Doha negotiations, reporters will be filing stories asking questions like this: If the WTO’s members can’t find a way to make Doha work, why bother to meet?

Privately, some diplomatic insiders agree that the notion of holding a “regular” ministerial while the Doha negotiations are left hanging is risky business. “Our problem is, without real progress on Doha, it will look awkward,” says one key WTO diplomat. “It will look a little like navel gazing.”

But while some inside players who (understandably) ask not to be identified by name, say they are discouraged, others add that they believe that on Dec. 3, the ministers in Geneva could well be able to announce that the key deals to bring the Doha negotiations to a successful conclusion have been struck The idea is that, by lowering the expectations, space is being created for trade negotiators to reach understandings without the usual political posturing getting in the way. And for sure, there will be ample diplomatic opportunities between now and December to bridge the current gaps in the Doha process. Here’s the forthcoming diplomatic road map that reveals the agenda that could make Doha largely a done deal by the time of the ministerial meetings in Geneva.

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BALI, Indonesia-–What a difference a year makes. Last May, when some 3,000-plus members of the world’s financial elite — diplomats, finance ministers, central bankers, private bankers, private-equity mavens, bond traders, and the journalists who cover them — met in Madrid for the Asian Development Bank’s 41st annual meetings, the common thread that ran through the meetings was a bitter resentment against perceived high-handed American diplomacy. The board of governors for the ADB’s 67 member countries enthusiastically approved a strategy aiming to eradicate the remaining pockets of poverty in the region by 2020, proposing to double the multilateral lending institution’s $55 billion capitalization. While some ADB members including Switzerland, Australia, and the United Kingdom expressed reservations, basically questioning where the money would come from, the United States stood out conspicuously for refusing to vote for the so-called Strategy 2020. With Uncle Sam – and particularly the unilateralist-minded President George W. Bush – it’s always “my-way-or-the-highway,”went the anti-American refrain. That was Madrid, May, 2008. Continue reading →