Team Bush is back on message, sending out minions to declare the only thing we have to fear is economic isolationism itself. This is the White House’s answer to the Dems’ unabashed exploitation of foreign outsourcing, a hot-button issue unwittingly given higher profile by the White House itself.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick last week passionately warned against economic isolationism in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow has said as much. So has White House spokesman Scott McClellan. And yes, President Bush was right on cue last Wednesday in Cleveland, a city in a critical state he carried the last time around and needs again in November.
Yep, it seems everyone around the club is saying it: Beware of economic isolationism. As if it were the Second Coming of Communism. As if there were such a threat.
White House and high-tech firms would like you to believe so. That’s why the Economic Growth and American Jobs Coalition now exists. At first glance, you might think this is an offshoot of Big Labor. Actually not. The group is a collection of business groups-including some with big-name high-tech and wireless representation-that is lobbying Congress to consider options other than protectionism to address outsourcing.
It’s all understandable. Wireless and high-tech sectors have a good thing going: cheap labor, lower overhead. Who can blame them? Oh, perhaps laid-off tech workers, forced to train individuals in India or Malaysia who will assume their jobs.
Democrats, seeing President Bush and GOP lawmakers vulnerable on the jobless recovery and the towering trade deficit, have seized on outsourcing with the kind of conviction that only a restless voter would know.
Both sides are distorting the issue and undermining an honest debate on outsourcing.
Fear mongering about economic isolationism is every bit as disingenuous as making outsourcing-manufacturing and services-into a bogeyman. Top Democrats, some free-traders, know in their heart of hearts White House economic adviser Greg Mankiw is not off the ranch in calling outsourcing an evolutionary extension of global trade. It does not make outsourcing right or wrong, only a reality-one worthy of a thoughtful and measured response.
At this point, you might think the Dems are responsible for the great outcry over outsourcing.
Think again. Seems something happened on the way to the Senate floor. Either GOP lawmakers did not get the White House memo instructing them to add “economic isolationism” to their political lexicon, or they ignored it.
When it came time to consider an amendment by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) to restrict outsourcing where federal procurement or funding is involved, the GOP-controlled Senate passed it by a convincing 70-to-26 margin.
It is, after all, an election year.
