Legislation No Solution to Trade Deficit
America is planning to go protectionist this year, assuaging its conscience and better sense of judgment by calling it something else.</br></br>Trade legislation will pass, and it will be described as nonprotectionist, a "program of action." It will go under the rubric of boosting "competitiveness"-as if the old Yankee trader spirit can be revived by legislative fiat. And some will be comforted by the thought that it could have been worse.</br></br>A new trade bill sponsored by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), chairman of the Finance Committee, and Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.)-with wide bipartisan endorsement-has already been inferentially blessed by a senior Reagan administration official as "less offensive" than last year's punitive quota legislation.</br></br>As former Council of Economic Advisers chairman Charles L. Schultze pointed out in a piece for the Los Angeles Times, concentrating on "competitiveness" is better than concentrating on raw protectionism. Those who are pushing the competitiveness theme lump together, with plain old protectionist nostrums, a number of laudable goals, such as remedial education and more spending for research and development. The bitter is coated with the sweet to make it more palatable politically.</br></br>The problem with competitiveness, as a disguise for protectionism, is that it is a phony solution to the problem of America's $170 billion trade deficit. The underlying assumption is that we've run up that much red ink because we can't compete with other countries that don't play by fair trading rules.