America’s Bitter Political Divide, Through an International Lens

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February 16, 2021

Talk about a political whirlwind. How to explain America’s bitter divisions to the watching world? 

The basic facts are a mouthful. Joe Biden’s electoral victory on November 3, 2020, which has been determined many times over to have been free and fair. Donald Trump’s defiant refusal to accept defeat. The dozens of (embarrassingly) failed Trump lawsuits. The lies of a stolen election. Violence in the streets of Washington, D.C., stoked by pro-Trump militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers (each of which has connections to the convicted-but-pardoned Roger Stone). The January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, followed by impeachment and the predictable acquittal at the hands of 43 out of 50 Senate Republicans. Whew. 

Still, the ruckus failed to prevent Biden’s electoral certification and January 20 inaugural. “Welcome back, America,” said friends around the world, who have been watching in real time. 

From my home in rural Rappahannock County, VA. (Population: 7,420), I also watched the February 13 U.S. Senate’s vote to acquit Trump in real time — on French television.

But the international headlines can’t by themselves explain what’s been driving American politics. Always remember former House Speaker Tip O’Neil’s truism that “all politics is local.”  So let’s look at America’s divisions narrowly, through an international lens focused on how prominent politicians in one congressional district in rural Virginia have been dealing with the turmoil.  

Virginia’s 5th congressional district is as rural Americana as it gets. It stretches from the outskirts of the Washington, D.C., suburbs to the foothills of the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains in Rappahannock County, and down through the scenic Shenandoah Valley, to the North Carolina border. 

Such parts of the southern United States are often referred to as the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Christians have significant political sway. The lines of the 5th district have been drawn to ensure that it would be extremely difficult for any Democrat to win election here.

Bob Good to the rescue

Which brings us to the 5th district’s newly-elected congressman, Republican Rep. Bob Good. He’s a self-described “biblical conservative” and a former athletic official at the Lynchburg-based Liberty University, the private evangelical school founded by the late Jerry Falwell Sr. 

Last summer, Good replaced the district’s former Republican congressman, Denver Riggleman, who was knocked off the ballot in a convention of party insiders engineered by angered 5th district Republican bosses. Their ire was aroused after Riggleman had officiated at the wedding of two gay men. Championing gay rights is anathema in 5th district Republican circles. 

In last November’s general election, Good routed his Democratic challenger, a mild-mannered physician named Cameron Webb who expressed concerns about the Trump’s administration’s erratic responses to the coronavirus pandemic. On the campaign trail — refusing to wear a mask — Good basically ran against the “radical left” and “socialists” who support the sort of violence perpetrated by “Islamic Jihad” terrorists. Dr. Webb must still be scratching his head. 

A new congressman’s priorities

Rep. Good’s two top declared priorities in Congress will be to fight for “religious freedoms” and for citizens’ rights to have concealed-carry permits to carry guns across state borders. He’s also a hardliner on immigration who has recently visited (and praised) a section of Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona. 

Good voted against certifying Biden’s electoral win. He has expressed admiration for a fellow Republican freshman from Georgia, the hard-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene has also drawn international headlines by espousing extreme conspiracy theories. She wants Joe Biden to be impeached, on grounds he has been “compromised” by America’s enemies and is a security risk. 

For Good, extreme rants have also come closer to home. His top district aide, Sandy Adams, had to apologize after she posted a Twitter attack on Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, likening the young progressive New Yorker to Adolf Hitler. 

[Adams also was among the crowds on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, with her husband, Melvin Adams, the 5th district Republican chairman and one of the party bosses who helped elect Bob Good to Congress. (To his credit, Melvin Adams told supporters in a private communication that he had tried to talk some ruffians out of perpetrating violence. He declined to respond to a query asking if he had shared what he had seen with the FBI.]

Sandy Adams posted a meme in 2015 that pictured then-President Barack Obama “along with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as an opponent of gun ownership,” Richmond-based political reporter Ben Paviour noted on National Public Radio news last month. 

A “Phony” Pandemic — and “Sissies” from Brazil

Good believes the coronavirus pandemic is “phony,” a “hoax” perpetrated by radical Democrats to shut down businesses, schools, and churches. Speaking last December before the Campbell County Militia near Lynchburg — again, maskless –Good asserted that social-distancing regulations issued by Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, were a threat to “our First Amendment rights to assemble,” not sensible precautions aimed at protecting Virginians’ health. 

Readers will be reminded of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who claims that Brazilians must not be “sissies” about the coronavirus. “All of us are going to die one day” anyway, he says. A Trump admirer, Bolsonaro has cultivated a passionate base including Christian conservatives and also paramilitary forces who don’t want their country’s gun laws loosened.

Two awkward facts: Brazil’s virus death count is approaching 240,000, second in the world only to the United States, which is now more than 485,000 — and rising. Trump and Bolsonaro have sought to deflect the blame for their poor performance to communist China. 

Enemies of the People

Let’s really narrow the lens, focusing on two upstanding citizens from the 5thdistrict’s Rappahannock County. Terry Dixon and Ron Frazier seem to illustrate the continuing resonance of Donald Trump’s persistent campaign to sow distrust of America’s free press as “enemies of the people.”

Dixon chairs the Rappahannock Republican committee. A deacon in a local Baptist church, he appeared at a Sunday service during last year’s election campaign with then-candidate Bob Good. (Virginia’s Democratic candidates tend to speak to the district’s black churches.) Dixon also played a leading role in Good’s ouster of then-incumbent Republican congressman Denver Riggleman last year. 

Frazier, a member of the county’s board of supervisors, is the longest-serving public official in the county. Frazier seems to personify the historical grievances of many Rappahannock natives, when he refers to the U.S. Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. 

A little historical research indicates the term is often associated with 20th century segregationists who opposed civil-rights legislation. Frazier did not respond to repeated invitations to explain whether that notion fit him. Nor did he respond when asked for his feelings about the Confederate flags being waved by Jan. 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol.  

[One thing that is guaranteed to inflame emotions in rural Virginia is to suggest to latter-day Johnny Rebs that the American civil war was an insurrection rooted in pro-slavery views. There is a statue on the county courthouse grounds dedicated to the memories of Rappahannock residents who gave their lives defending the confederacy. Their cause was “righteous,” according to the inscription. Armed men patrolled that statue last summer, should Black Lives Matter or Antifa decide to show up. They didn’t. While the lingering resentments in the American south are not as openly hateful as, say, the centuries of festering animosities in places like Armenia or Serbia, they have never gone away.]

Frazier was recently the object of some controversy in the local Rappahannock News, after it came out that on January 6 he had attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse, and then the mass demonstration on the East Side of the Capitol. “We were on the ground,” Frazier stated in an account posted on social media. “Not sure about any property damage but a woman that tried to breach was shot.” 

Unsurprisingly, that raised eyebrows. Exactly what did Frazier see that day? Did he cross police lines? If so, he would have been breaking the law, said the local chairwoman of the Democratic Party who suggested the possibility of a censure. Others in the community questioned Frazier’s judgement — not for peaceably exercising his constitutional rights to protest, but for believing what Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell has famously called presidential “lies.”

In his reports in the Rappahannock News, editor John McCaslin has also highlighted comments supporting Frazier from the chairwoman of the county’s board of supervisors, and also Republican committee chairman Terry Dixon. 

It’s hard to see how any reporter could have been more even-handed. McCaslin is a veteran journalist whose 40-plus career has included stints as a White House correspondent for the Washington Times, and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. He has a reputation as a straight shooter. Toward that end, McCaslin has recently run several missives from residents who have strongly supported Ron Frazier. 

But Republican chairman Terry Dixon hasn’t been impressed. Dixon circulated a private e-mail in local religious circles that vented his deep-seated beliefs. It’s revealing of the passions that are roiling American political waters.

“Dear Friend,” Dixon began. “I need your help to stop something terrible from happening next Monday at the February 1 Board of Supervisors meeting. Rappahannock County Democrats are trying to censure Supervisor Ron Frazier because he attended a Trump rally. With the help of the Rappahannock News they are lying and distorting the truth.” 

Continuing, Dixon asserted that Rappahannock County Democrats are “far-left” socialists who are “behind an effort of character assassination that echoes the propaganda efforts of Saul Alinsky, the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.” 

Dixon electronically whispered that “for years,” the Democrats “and the leftist Rappahannock News have aggressively tried to damage Ron Frazier’s reputation.” They have accused Frazier of breaking the law he claimed. “All of us are next on their smear list,” he added. “If we don’t stop them now they will get bolder and more dangerous.”

Thus fired up, a group of concerned local citizens turned up at the Feb 1 supervisors’ meeting — two meetings, actually, as there were both afternoon and evening sessions — arguing that the board should not censure Ron Frazier. 

Never let the facts get in the way of a good political argument, as they say. Here, nobody had accused Frazier of breaking the law. The board of supervisors had no intention of censuring him. Discussing Frazier’s attendance at the Stop the Steal events was not even on the agenda. Rappahannock Democrats had not questioned Frazier’s constitutional rights to peaceable assembly. 

I sent written questions to Frazier, asking if he thought he’d been fairly treated by his local newspaper. He did not respond. Nor did Dixon respond to repeated written requests for his comments.

There’s a lot more that could be said about moral leadership at the American grassroots level. Many attendees at the Rappahannock County supervisors’ February 1 meetings, including Ron Frazier, were captured on video not wearing masks to protect the public health. Nor were many of those good citizens willing to practice safe social-distancing. Why the Rappahannock County board of supervisors is willing to hold public meetings that could endanger the lives of their own constituents is a matter perhaps best left to moral historians. 

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro — and other authoritarian-minded world leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte who sew distrust of the press — would understand. 

And so would Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has long used misinformation tools aimed at dividing Americans by sewing distrust of a free press. Sometimes one wonders why Putin need bother, when so Americans — from Donald Trump down to America’s small communities — unwittingly do his work for him?  

Reversing our lens to look at the bigger picture, however, suggests a different set of emerging political realities. Republicans with insular attitudes are only competitive in four of Virginia’s eleven congressional districts. Trump won the small rural counties, but the majority of Virginia’s urban- and suburban voters have moved on. They support America’s multicultural, multiracial, rule-of-law based modern society.

Hillary Clinton easily beat Trump in Virginia’s 2016 presidential election, winning 49 percent of the state’s vote to Trump’s 44 percent. In 2020, Joe Biden thumped Trump even more: 54-44 percent.  

Asked for any ideas on how Republicans might become more competitive statewide, Virginia 5th congressional district chairman Melvin Dixon did not respond.

How an America Firster Knocked Off a Sitting Republican Congressman

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By Greg Rushford

June 15, 2020

If all politics is local, as Tip O’Neill, the late Speaker of the House, used to say, it’s clearly the same for international trade politics. 

This story begins with a definite local twist, involving Republican Party inside politics in rural Virginia. But international trade aficionados everywhere will appreciate certain ironies that stretch far beyond Virginia’s sprawling 5th Congressional District, which ranges from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Washington, D.C., and down the Shenandoah Valley some 250 miles to the North Carolina border. 

The gerrymandered district, which heavily favors Republican candidates, is larger than six U.S. States, including New Jersey and New Hampshire. 

A sitting first-term U.S. congressman named Denver Riggleman has just been denied renomination by a handful of Virginia Republican activists. At first blush, this sure looks curious. Riggleman is a conservative Republican with a libertarian streak who boasts of voting with President Donald Trump more than 90 percent of the time. And he has supported international trade positions championed by the pro-market U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens upon dozens of small businesses in Virginia. 

On June 13, a convention of 2,537 Republican insiders voted to replace Riggleman with a challenger named Bob Good. Good trounced Riggleman by 58.1% to 41.8. So Good, not Riggleman, will be on the ballot in the forthcoming November 3 U.S. national elections. He will run against one of four Democrats who will be competing for their party’s nomination in a June 23 primary election. 

Good comes from southern Virginia’s Bible Belt. He’s a self-styled “Biblical Conservative” and a proud America First hardliner, even when it comes to legal immigration policies. He would deny automatic citizenship by birth. He would require immigrants to speak English. Good would deny women the rights to abortion, even when the mother’s life would otherwise be at risk. 

Such “bright red” positions, as Good puts them, would hardly be winning in Virginia statewide elections — especially with moderate-to-socially liberal Republicans from Washington, D.C.’s northern Virginia suburbs, and cities like Richmond and Charlottesville (home of the University of Virginia). But in the rural 5th District, they have much support. 

Moreover, the energetic Good simply outworked and outmaneuvered the hapless Riggleman at every turn. 

Most local press reports have rightly noted that Riggleman first landed in hot water with his Party’s social conservatives after officiating last summer at a wedding of two gay conservative Republican men. His stance reflected a refreshing tolerance and a sense of personal decency, not to mention respect for Virginia law that allows for same-sex marriage. Riggleman said all he saw was two fine young people who were in love.

But many 5th District Republicans saw a Biblical travesty. While the Party insists it is inclusive, such inclusiveness seems to extend only to supporters of the Republican platform — which considers marriage strictly a religious matter between men and women. 

But leaving the biblical politics aside, it’s the international trade ironies to this story that stand out. 

A central part of his campaign was putting “Americans, American jobs, and America first,” Bob Good told reporter Charlotte Rene Woods, who interviewed him for a May 14 Charlottesville Tomorrow article. “We’ve got to place a greater premium on protecting American jobs, American workers and reducing the number of worker visas to only what is truly needed and doesn’t depress wages or eliminate job opportunities for Americans.”

To further explain his agenda, Good posted a stirring commentary on his campaign website that one of his strongest political allies from Rappahannock County, VA, had published in local newspaper, the Rappahannock News, on March 12. 

Ms. Miller is a prominent 5tth District Republican who is well-known for bringing a passion to her political jousting. She is no stranger to hyperbole. “I am an avowed free-market capitalist living in a country that was sinking toward Marxism — then Trump began righting the ship of state,” Miller has tweeted. 

And in her commentary that became a centerpiece of Good’s campaign, Miller didn’t pull punches in criticizing Riggleman’s record on immigration. Riggleman had been serving the interests of “the power elites and special interests” on Capitol Hill, not his own constituents, she declared. 

In particular, Miller pointed to Riggleman’s vote for a measure last year aimed at increasing H2B visas for foreign workers. “This is for foreign workers to take the high-tech jobs your children and grandchildren are looking for,” Miller asserted. 

Miller also called Riggleman to task for voting for H.R. 1044, a House bill titled the “Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act,” aimed at increasing U.S. immigrant visas for high-skilled foreigners. The measure had been sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, an “ultra liberal Democrat from California’s Silicon Valley, the home of tech giants Google and Facebook,” Miller wrote.

Miller asked: “Why is the Republican congressman from the 5th district of Virginia doing the bidding of Democrat Zoe Lofgren’s Silicon Valley masters of the universe? Why isn’t he listening to his own constituents?”

One would expect a savvy incumbent congressman to shoot back that there definitely was another side to that story. That he had been listening to Virginians who wanted to be globally competitive. And that he had voted in the best economic interests of his constituents. 

For openers, Riggleman could have pointed out that H2B visas are not for “high-tech” jobs. He could have said that dozens of Virginia’s small businesses — notably including landscapers — depend upon H2B visas to bring in temporary workers from Mexico and Central America — only after American workers cannot be found. 

These temporary foreign landscape artisans work during the growing seasons, pay their U.S. income taxes, and then return home to their families. Riggleman could have argued strenuously that such legal immigration is entirely defensible, and that it discourages illegal immigration. That the visas are not only good for the American economy and American enterprises — but very Republican. 

The congressman might also have reminded Good and Miller that the H2B visa legislation was strongly supported by a long list of such mainstream pro-market business advocacy organizations as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Virginia Forestry Association, the Virginia Nursery and Landscape Association, the National Fisheries Institute, and the Seasonal Employment Alliance. These are top-notch outfits, and respected on both sides of the aisle in Washington. 

As for H.R. 1044, which does bring in high-tech foreign workers, Riggleman could have explained that it was simply wrong to accuse him of doing the bidding of the “ultra liberal” Zoe Lofgren from the Silicon Valley. (Lofgren is not regarded as a leftist firebreather on the Hill; she enjoys a reputation as a sensible lawmaker who is respected across party lines.) 

In truth, H.R. 1044 was clearly bipartisan; it was co-sponsored by Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck, a lawmaker with strong conservative credentials. It passed the House last summer with a substantial bipartisan majority of 365-65. Every Virginia Republican congressman voted for it. But only Riggleman will be soon be out of a job because of his vote. 

There’s a lot more: The measure’s companion bill in the Senate is being supported by such Republican stalwarts as Sense. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. These legislators are hardly “ultra liberals.”

In sum, there were plenty of opportunities for Riggleman to have reminded his constituents that he had been supporting measures designed to promote legal immigration in the interests of helping American businesses to compete for talent in the global marketplace.

But the congressman never effectively made the case to his constituents, essentially ceding the political territory to opponent Good. (In the weeks before the June 13 convention, Riggleman’s press secretary did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.)

That political naiveté — a certain back-footedness, if you will — goes a long way toward explaining why the June 13 Republican convention delegates who voted outside the Tree of Life Ministries in Lynchburg enjoyed chucking Riggleman out.

Miller declined to comment for this article. But she told a reporter for the Rappahannock News after last Saturday’s vote that she had been “disappointed” in Riggleman’s performance in Congress. And the newspaper quoted a triumphant post-convention e-mail written by another ardent Rappahannock County Republican named Ron Maxwell. “Vote for more foreign workers and you’ll be voted out of office!”  

The late Speaker Tip O’Neill, who said that all politics is local, would understand (and lament) the current polarized political atmosphere in America. So would former Republican President Ronald Reagan. Reagan touted what he called the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Any Fellow Republican.”

Despite their differing political philosophies, conservative Reagan and the Democratic liberal O’Neill operated with mutual respect for each other. They knew how to forge political compromises in the best interests of their country.  

Republican candidate Bob Good doesn’t seem to be interested in Tip O’Neill or Ronald Reagan. “I’m not going to Washington to compromise for the Democrats,” he told reporter Tyler Hamilton of the Daily Progress earlier this month. “I disagree with the Democratic Party on everything.”

Introduction to International Political Economy: The Wakefield Seminars (Class Three)

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By Greg Rushford

May 24, 2020

NOTE TO READERS: This text is the third of three lectures that I presented via Zoom to students at the Wakefield Country Day School in Huntly, VA.  I presented this third class on May 19, 2020.  For the first lecture, click here, and for the second lecture, click here. You may also return to the main page and click on the links there.

Welcome to the third of three classes on the fundamentals of International Political Economy. This one’s on the big picture: the World Trade Organization. The WTO is the international institution that has presided over the rules of global trade flows for the past 25 years. 

The WTO has been part of the world’s most successful international economic experiment that has served the world well for 70-plus years, but is currently facing an uncertain future. 

This is because political support has waned for its mission in key world capitals has waned — notably including New Delhi, Beijing, and Washington, D.C. Before we’re finished this morning, I’ll pass along some context aimed at helping make some rather confusing current headlines, well, perhaps less so. 

This topic is important. There’s not enough time this morning even to mention all the issues, much less answer the inevitable questions. But I can explain the basics, and offer an analytic framework aimed at equipping you to think through some big thoughts independently. And I can point you to sources aimed at smoothing the path for further reading and reflection. 

Let’s take this from the top.

More than 600 international civil servants who come from 80-some countries work in the WTO’s secretariat, which is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The Centre William Rappard building is a gem of European classical architecture. The building dates to the 1920s, and is situated in a lovely park — adorned with inspiring sculptures — that runs along the shores of Lake Geneva, with distant views of the famous Mont Blanc and the Swiss Alps. 

Regardless of the impressive surroundings, keep this in mind: the responsibility for the decision-making is not vested in the staffers and their Director General who work in Geneva, as important as their renowned expertise is. The responsibility for setting the rules of global commerce is to be found at the highest political levels of government in 164 member countries. 

To repeat, because this isn’t always understood as well as it should — the key to understanding the international economic issues that drive the WTO’s trade negotiations is to be found in in the political calculations in various world capital cities. 

So why is the WTO so important?

The importance of tariff slashing

The driving economic idea when the WTO was launched in 1995 was to broaden the successes of its predecessor organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The GATT — just 23 countries led by the United States —had been established in 1947. It was first tasked with slashing high protectionist tariffs that had been notorious drags on global economic growth during some particularly nasty trade wars of the 1930s. 

But before we get to the economics of dealing with tariff wars and dismantling other barriers to trade, the first thing to keep in mind is the fundamental rationale that has always driven the GATT and the WTO: national security. 

National security drives the economics

I highly recommend that you google a 2018 report: The International Trading System at Risk and the Need to Return to First Principles. The report was written for the economics and security committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. This is as good an explanation of the importance of the GATT and the WTO, historically and currently, as I’ve seen, even though the NATO economists are not connected to the WTO in any way.  

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is based in Brussels. It brings together parliamentarians — members of the U.S. Congress and their legislative counterparts in the 30 NATO countries— to exchange ideas.

The acronym NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This North American-European military alliance was created in 1949 as a defensive shield against military aggression from Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. (The world’s oldest military alliance, today NATO forces remain on the watch for mischief from Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. American leadership in NATO has always been regarded as central.)

To be clear: NATO and its parliamentary assembly are totally separate institutions from the GATT/WTO. People who work in these organizations don’t even talk to each other. I’m not even sure how much the NATO parliamentarians talk to their counterparts on the military side of NATO.

Still, it’s important to recognize that prominent NATO circles understand and respect the economic portfolios of the GATT and WTO. They understand that this is about more than economics. And they certainly do not want NATO countries to start slapping each other with high tariffs and other trade restraints, as such would weaken the vital security ties. 

The 2018 report looked back over the years at what the GATT/WTO had accomplished:  

“[T]he liberal trading system established after World War II had not only contributed to an unprecedented rise of prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, pulled millions out of poverty, and encouraged the diffusion of technology and ideas, it had also reinforced the security order. In fact, security, democracy and free trade proved mutually reinforcing.” 

The report recognized that world leaders who had created the liberal international economic order after World War II “knew full well that during the 1930s an array of ‘beggar thy neighbour’ protectionist measures had contributed to the Great Depression, poisoned inter-state relations and had doubtless been a central factor in the descent into World War II.” 

In other words, as former U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who served under President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933-44, was fond of saying: trade wars tend to end in real shooting wars. 

“I saw that you could not separate the idea of commerce from the idea of war and peace,” as Hull recollected n his memoirs. “I thereupon came to believe that if we could increase commercial exchanges among nations over lowered trade and tariff barriers and remove international obstacles to trade, we would go a long way toward eliminating war itself.”

This nexus between national security, peaceful resolution of conflicts, and economic prosperity is so fundamental to the WTO’s mission that it’s often overlooked, or just taken for granted.

The business of streamlining global trade flows

Why have the GATT and the WTO been regarded as the world’s most successful international economic experiment? The short answer is that when the GATT was launched in 1947, average global tariffs had been in the 20-30 percent range — with peaks for some import-sensitive products far higher than that. 

This was, at least, a measurable improvement from the higher (prohibitive) tariffs during the 1930s Great Depression. 

But the GATT’s founders realized that there would inevitably be powerful domestic lobbies around the world that would always seek protection from import competition. Nations cannot be counted upon to dismantle their protectionist schemes unilaterally, even though such would be in their own self-interests. 

A series of GATT multilateral negotiating rounds steadily slashed tariffs, which had fallen to an average of perhaps 11 percent when the WTO took over the GATT’s legal framework in 1995. Presently, they are about nine percent worldwide — and are roughly between two- and three percent for the most advanced economies in Europe, the United States, and Japan.

As tariffs and other restraints to trade have been slowly-but-steadily slashed in the past seven-plus decades, world trade volumes have risen a whopping 4,136 percent, the WTO has reported. The lives of countless millions of people worldwide who have never heard of the GATT or the WTO have been enriched. 

It’s more than just tariffs

These days, the WTO deals with far more than tariffs: too many issues to list here. 

There have been successful negotiations that have smoothed the flow of information technology across international borders. And others aimed at giving the poorer WTO members a helping hand in expanding their international trade. Perhaps the most difficult political issues are associated with making international agriculture trade more efficient. The WTO’s website has the details. 

You might also familiarize yourself with the sites for the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The Bank, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is one of the so-called Bretton Woods institutions, dating to 1944. The OECD, based in Paris, is an organization whose members are the so-called rich countries). These sites house some of the world’s best international economic research.You will never run out of term-paper materials. 

The importance of being true to core principles

It is always worth keeping in mind the core principle that has always driven the GATT and the WTO. It’s called MFN: most-favored-nation. It’s simple — but not simplistic. MFN’s so-called “national treatment” means that WTO member countries must not discriminate against other trading partners: all must be treated equally. 

The United States, once again, was first-among-equals in insisting that the GATT and WTO would be based on the core MFN obligations. That’s not surprising, as the concept of treating all of America’s trading partners equally goes to the heart of who we are as a people. 

I strongly recommend a book called Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy. This tome looks rather daunting; it runs over 800 pages. Fortunately, it is smooth reading and can be absorbed in bites. This remarkable scholarship was researched and written by Douglas Irwin, the nation’s leading economic historian who teaches at Dartmouth College. I keep this book close, for the perspectives it sheds on current, sometimes confusing, headlines.

And some of the most valuable perspectives shed light that is related to the American character — and is particularly striking in current political environment in Washington.

Irwin notes that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1785: “I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” And consider this observation on trade, from Benjamin Franklin: “Most of the restraints put upon it in different countries seem to have been the projects of particulars for their private interest, under the pretense of public good.” 

It’s that last phrase where Franklin nailed it. (Remember last class, when we talked about globally uncompetitive U.S. rose growers who lobbied for high “unfair dumping” tariffs on Colombia that would have resulted in sky-high prices for all American consumers?)

Difficult Global Politics

So why, despite the impressive history, is the WTO today an institution in serious trouble? 

Since its creation in 1995, the WTO has not been able to conclude one major multilateral trade-liberalizing round of negotiations. The so-called Doha Round, which began in 2001, has been in a coma for more than a decade. (Paul Blustein, a former top Washington Post reporter, wrote about the Doha collapse in his 2009 ground-breaking book, Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations. This book is required reading.)  

The most important reason for concern is simply put: the political will in key world capitals when it comes to dismantling trade barriers has been gradually but steadily weakening. 

I’ve been tracking this decline for years, and immodestly suggest that you might want to go to my website, www.rushfordreport.com. I wrote “Murder on the Doha Express” for the Milken Institute Review in 2012. Two years later I contributed “The General Disagreement on Tariffs and Trade” to Foreign Policy magazine. In 2015, I contributed “The WTO Struggles in Nairobi” for the Wall Street Journal. And in 2018 I wrote “Trump’s War on the WTO,” again for the Journal. 

While there are many complexities, a quick look at the attitudes of just three WTO member countries — India, China, and the United States — illustrate what’s been going on. 

“India First”

India, although that country has only about a two-percent share of global trade flows, has always been difficult. Indian politicians have never really seemed to believe in multilateral trade liberalization. They will tell you that India can cut its own (high) tariffs and dismantle the rest of its (considerable) trade barriers when leaders believe that is in their own self-interest — which doesn’t happen frequently. 

When Indian trade diplomats speak, many other developing countries’ leaders tend to listen. So protectionism, New Delhi-style, has champions far beyond the Subcontinent. 

Indian political leaders have always championed restrictive “Buy India” laws, aimed at keeping globally competitive foreigners at bay. It’s terrible economics, the evidence for which is seen in India’s continuing poverty. But the politically-connected domestic lobbies in India that benefit from the schemes have never complained. 

India has just this year played a leading role in once-again delaying the most important current negotiations the WTO has underway. Those negotiations are aimed at prohibiting harmful governmental subsidies that have contributed to overfishing and the depletion of fish stocks worldwide. They have been dragging on for some two decades, with no particular sense of urgency. (If you are wondering why, stay tuned. I intend to publish a report on the fish negotiations in my online journal in the very near future.) 

“China First”

Naturally, everyone is curious about China’s contribution to the WTO’s decline.  

I was among those who welcomed China’s joining the WTO in 2001, and was thrilled when that formerly impoverished country started to embrace global competition — lifting hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese people out of cruel economic miseries. 

But anyone who scans the current headlines can see ample cause for concerns about where China is now heading.

For openers, China has also been one of the obstacles to a successful WTO deal to save the world’s fishing grounds. China is the world’s biggest subsidizer of its huge industrial-scale fishing fleets that are devastating fishing grounds as far away as West Africa. (Check out the website of the Environmental Justice Foundation for those sobering details. It has fascinating and alarming documentation.)

China is also the world’s second-largest economy. Yet in the WTO fish negotiations, China is insisting that it be given special carveouts to continue the destructive practices — as if China it were still one of the world’s poorer nations. 

Since joining the WTO in 2001, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing have often spoken highly of the institution. They have praised multilateralism, in general. But if I had to write an article making the case that China is anywhere close to becoming a respected WTO leader today, it would be, well, short. 

Beijing has been negotiating to join the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement, under which member countries agree to open public contracts to competitive international bidders since 2002 —without summoning the political will to seal the deal. 

In 2008 China helped put the WTO’s so-called Doha Round of multilateral trade liberalization in its coma, by refusing to cut high tariffs on a range of about a dozen key industrial tariffs. (India was an accomplice. As mentioned previously, Paul Blustein’s Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations has those details.)

Remember how trade politics in New Delhi turn on Buy Indian trade rules? Beijing has its Buy Chinese rules, and the Party has many ways to make life uncomfortable — miserable, even — for foreign investors, while propping up its own government-owned enterprises. 

This month, Australia called for a global medical investigation to pinpoint precisely how the global coronavirus pandemic began. Who wouldn’t want to know that?

It seems the Communist Party of China is, well, sensitive on this particular issue. Furious Chinese officials immediately banned imports of Australian beef from four processors — keeping straight faces to pretend the ban was driven by health concerns. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized last week, this constitutes flat-out “coercive” economic diplomacy. (Not to mention the cruelty of denying delicious Aussie steaks to innocent Chinese diners.)

Such Beijing bullying is hardly an isolated case.

The Chinese have also just slapped on prohibitive 73-plus percent anti-dumping tariffs on imports of Australian barley. Here’s a term-paper idea: figure out how Chinese officials calculate that Australian barley farmers are so generous that they would sell their stuff to Chinese consumers at a 73 percent loss.  

“America First”

Meanwhile, America’s political support for multilateral trade liberalization has been declining in recent years.

President Barack Obama never gave the WTO much of a priority. His three favorite words, Obama told campaign audiences, were “Made in America.” Unwilling to focus on the WTO’s multilateral trade-liberalizing negotiations, he focused on a smaller regional trade deal with eleven trading partners called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But Obama failed to obtain the necessary approval for even that deal from the U.S. Congress. 

(In one of his first acts of office in 2017, President Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP, saying it would have been a terrible deal, while offering no evidence for that assertion.)

President Donald Trump’s stated positions on the WTO are clear. Multilateral trade liberalization is simply not on his agenda. 

He has repeatedly called the WTO a “disaster.” He has repeatedly said that he is a “Tariff Man.” He has launched a series of trade wars against “cheating” American trading partners ranging from Canada and the Europeans to China. Trump has said that he believes that trade wars are “easy” to win. (The WTO’s website reports that global trade growth had already begun to slow last year, before the coronavirus pandemic struck.)

The WTO was created “to benefit everybody but us,” Trump asserted on Fox News. He has threatened to withdraw.

And when it comes to matters of national security, the White House has been working to raise tariffs on certain imports on grounds they present security threats to America. These products include — I’m not making this up! — automobile bumpers, and nails. And the White House has also called steel imported from Canada, our NATO ally to our immediate north, a national security threat. Talk about material for student term papers! 

The United States has also brought to a halt the WTO’s legal machinery to resolve trade disputes between members. This has been accomplished simply by withholding consensus to replace the expiring terms of jurists on the Appellate Body. That judicial body — established when the WTO was created in 1995, with strong U.S. support — now cannot function because it lacks a quorum. 

United States trade officials no longer stress that Washington still believes in the WTO’s core principle: Most-Favored Nation non-discriminatory treatment of all trading partners. I’ve recently asked President Trump’s top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, if he would care to issue a statement stressing the MFN’s importance. There has been no response. (U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer hasn’t visited WTO headquarters in Geneva, sending another unmistakable signal that multilateral trade liberalization remains in disfavor in the White House.)

It’s important, of course, to see how the White House defends itself from its critics. I suggest you google some recent columns in the New York Times written by Peter Navarro, a White House trade official, and by Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative.  (Navarro has also authored a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on cable television frequently. And the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has a website that further explains the Trump administration’s thinking.) 

Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, has been pressing for a congressional resolution calling for the United States to withdraw from the WTO. He also wrote it up for the New York Times’ opinion pages. (Remember, when the authors are politicians, the trick is to sift through the rhetoric, looking for economically viable thought.)

You might also want to become familiar with some  academically sound sources whom your university economics professors will expect you to be familiar with. In Washington, D.C., check out William Reinsch’s columns that appear on the site for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The respected Peterson Institute for International Economics also publishes helpful research and analysis. 

In Europe, the site for the Brussels-based European Center for International Political Economy (ECIPE) is another must-read. 

Here’s another piece of unsolicited advice, if you want to keep on top of international affairs: If you aren’t already doing so, start reading The Economist immediately — and keep reading it for the rest of your lives.

So why be optimistic?

One final thought: don’t let the gloom-and-doom get the best of you. 

The declining support for the WTO’s international economic architecture that has served the world so well is deeply troubling to many. Still, there is good reason to end this class on an optimistic note. 

The problems that young people faced in previous generations were also daunting — even much worse. When I was born in 1944, people were still being killed in World War II. In 1945, after the war ended, Europe was devastated, with millions upon millions of refugees struggling to survive. Across the Pacific, Japan was flattened. People were starving in the Philippines. Africa, still in the grip of European colonialism, was unfree. 

When I first visited Europe in the early 1960s — almost twenty years after the fighting ended — piles of rubble from previously bombed-out cities like Rotterdam and London were still visible. Faces on the streets of Paris were still gaunt. 

Today, these wonderful European cities have been restored. They are marvelous — visit them. 

And go to Asia, Tokyo sparkles, as do other Asian cities that have embraced global competition: Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei. 

The Philippines unfortunately remains poor — due to insular “Filipino First” protectionist sentiments fueled by an entrenched corrupt elite that have long held that country back. 

But in recent years the Philippines has begun to open up to global competition, enough to become one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia. And while all of sub-Saharan Africa only has about one percent of global trade flows, there are some encouraging signs of progress there, also.

So there is much important work to do. Whatever you make of your lives, this is a wonderful time to be young and well-educated. 

As the 19th Century American thinker Henry David Thoreau once put it: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams — Live the life you’ve imagined.”