Facts forgotten in political ads against trade deals

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By Jack Torry, Columbus Bureau Updated 12:55 AM Monday, June 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — On the eve of last year’s export award ceremony in Columbus, it would have been difficult to find more enthusiastic cheerleaders for international trade than Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher.

Strickland pledged to “maintain our competitive edge in the global marketplace,’’ while Fisher boasted that Ohio was the only state in the country to increase its exports every year from 1998 through 2008.

Now fast forward to this year — an election year, by the way — and Strickland and Fisher are talking very differently.

In his very first commercial against Republican gubernatorial nominee John Kasich, Strickland featured a former Dayton factory worker who complained that as a congressman, Kasich “voted for all those trade deals that sent Ohio jobs overseas.’’

Then Fisher appeared in Youngstown to assail Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman, charging that as U.S. trade representative in 2006, Portman “sold out’’ Ohio steel workers “under pressure from the Chinese government.’’

Those were clear signals that Fisher and Strickland plan to conduct an “us-against-them’’ campaign, using international trade as the villain, and denouncing the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China in 2000. If jobs are lost, the argument goes, it must be the fault of foreigners.

It is a variation on an old theme. During a presidential debate in Cleveland in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama promised to unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA. In his 2006 victory over Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, Sen. Sherrod Brown repeatedly vowed to bring an end to “these job-killing trade agreements.’’

Such talk is a hit with organized labor in Ohio, which has lost 362,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001. Just about any community in Ohio can find a large plant that has closed, such as the General Motors facility in Moraine.

But to make the argument work again, Ohio Democrats will have to navigate this message around a pile of inconvenient facts.

Few states are more dependent on open foreign markets than Ohio. The U.S. Commerce Department reports that in the first quarter of this year, Ohio exports were a staggering 27 percent higher than the first quarter of last year — growing faster than the national average.

Ohio companies sold $9.6 billion worth of goods abroad in the first quarter, including nearly $2 billion of industrial machinery and computers and $1.7 billion of cars, trucks and automotive parts.

“What we export are durable goods,’’ said Lisa Schaaf, chief operating office of the Ohio Manufacturers Association. “Big, heavy things. And people say nobody makes anything in this country any more.’’

Until the recession year of 2009, Ohio’s exports increased every year during the previous decade — from $22.7 billion in 1996 to $45.6 billion in 2008. More than 360,000 Ohio jobs are linked in some way to exports.

The three largest recipients of Ohio goods are Canada, Mexico and China, the latter two which undergo withering criticism from Democrats. Ohio’s exports to China have leaped from a paltry $292 million in 2001 to $1.9 billion last year.

One reason the Democratic argument works so well is Republican free traders offer such a feeble defense. Portman’s people would like you to believe that he carried on a one-man trade war with China, when in fact his record in Congress and the Bush administration shows he has a healthy understanding of international trade.

As for Strickland and Fisher? They would do their supporters a favor by explaining reality: NAFTA isn’t going to be scrapped, and trade with China will only increase. Find a new issue instead.

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