Sununu Named Senate’s Top Free Trade Supporter
WASHINGTON, March 16-The Cato Institute named Sen. John Sununu the Senate’s truest free trader at a Capitol Hill luncheon Wednesday promoting the importance of a free-trade policy for the United States.
According to a Cato report on the trade voting record of the 108 th Congress, Sununu’s votes were the most consistent with the libertarian think tank’s views on free trade, which include opposition to trade barriers, such as tariffs on foreign agriculture goods, and to trade subsidies, such as government financial support of domestic agriculture.
Of the 10 Senate votes on trade barriers and the one Senate vote on subsidies, Sununu voted the free-trade position every time, Cato said. The report considered as free traders those members who voted against trade barriers and subsidies alike at least two-thirds of the time.
“Trade allows us, our country, our workers, our employers, to make investments and put capital in those areas where we are most productive and most capable, where we have the potential to earn the greatest return on that capital,” said Sununu, who was one of the featured speakers at the luncheon. “We oppose barriers because they are inefficient. They set up costly and arbitrary hurdles to us.getting access to the inputs, the materials, the services, the information that will allow them to operate as efficiently as possible.”
Sununu warned the overflow crowd about the “slippery slope of protectionism,” saying that Congress’s penchant for protecting jobs through trade barriers and subsidies poses an economic danger that will leave American companies producing buggy whips in a world economy producing combustion engines.
“The danger is that you are protecting a less-competitive, less-valuable area of economic activity, and if you protect it long enough and the barriers finally do fall, you have a catastrophe on your hands,” he said. “The importance of knocking down these barriers is to allow the dynamic economy to operate, and that does mean that there will be companies that succeed and companies that manufacture buggy whips that slowly decline.”
Daniel Griswold, the author of the report and director of Cato’s Center for Trade Policy Studies, praised Sununu and Rep. Jeffery Flake, an Arizona Republican who was the most consistent free-trade voter in the House last session, saying that they “respect the judgment of their constituents to spend their own money, their hard-earned dollars, in any way they choose in a global economy.”
Free trade allows individuals to invest money without government interference, allows the economy to grow at a faster rate by spurring innovation and productivity through competition, and allows developing nations to improve their economies and decrease poverty while improving labor standards and respect for human rights, Griswold said.
The report found that the congressional approach to trade policy is inconsistent, approving free-trade agreements and reducing tariffs while maintaining export and production subsidies, which Cato says draws resources away from “their best use.”
“We look like hypocrites when America’s political leaders complain incessantly that U.S. producers must compete against unfair subsidies and trade barriers abroad and this study shows that very few members of Congress are voting consistently for policies that would create a freer global economy, free from subsidies and trade barriers,” Griswold said. “Most members of Congress have no standing to criticize other governments who deviate from free trade.”
According to the report, few members of Congress voted consistently for free trade: 25 in the House, including Rep. Charles Bass, and 24 in the Senate. Only five of the free traders were Democrats.
In addition to the free trade category, the Cato study identified members whose votes put them in three other trade positions. “Internationalists” are those who opposed barriers and supported subsidies at least two-thirds of the time, with 157 House members and 24 Senate members falling in this category, including Sen. Judd Gregg. Of the internationalists 99 are Republicans.
Those identified as “interventionists,” supporting both barriers and subsidies two-thirds of the time, comprised 16 House members and 15 Senate members. This group included just seven Republicans.
The last group, called “isolationists,” supported barriers and opposed subsidies two-thirds of the time; that was the smallest group, with just two House members, both Democrats.
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