The manufacturing lobby is fighting a two-front war in Washington, and it’s straining relationships among the traditional allies of free trade.
On one front, American industrial giants are fighting for free trade, where they find themselves allied with Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, in combat against Democratic leaders.
Simultaneously, big manufacturers, in alliance with Democrats, are fighting for trade subsidies, and so blasting conservatives — including McConnell and Ryan — as free-enterprise purists.
The policies at hand are Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im). TPA legislation, pending in both chambers as we go to press, would pave the way for eventual approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a free trade agreement between the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim nations. Ex-Im is a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports by extending taxpayer-backed financing to foreign buyers of U.S. goods. The agency’s charter will expire at the end of June unless Congress passes legislation reauthorizing it.
Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, is one of the congressional champions of TPA. Ryan, according to one Republican operative, chided business lobbyists in recent days for spending time and money advocating Ex-Im, thus diverting resources from the free trade push.
“Ryan thinks trade is more important than Ex-Im, but the business community obviously doesn’t.” Ryan, in fact, opposes Ex-Im reauthorization, and according to the operative, called some business leaders to express “frustration that not enough money is being spent on trade, and it’s being spent on Ex-Im.”
This echoed a report from Politico’s Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman that top GOP aides see industry as sleeping on the free-trade job. “David Stewart, a top aide to Speaker John Boehner,” Politico reported, “voiced the frustration of Boehner’s office during a meeting Friday with officials from business lobby groups, telling them their effort is falling short.”
“If TPA passes in the House,” a GOP aide told Politico, “it will be despite the downtown coalition and the president, not because of them.”
It’s not that the business lobby isn’t lobbying for TPA — it is. It’s hard to measure where big business is spending more time, money, and political capital. But it is undeniable that the time, money and energy spent lobbying for Ex-Im is not being spent on advancing free trade.
The National Association of Manufacturers supports both TPA and Ex-Im, but these two issues definitely compete for the industry’s bandwidth. On NAM’s website Tuesday, in the run-up to the TPA vote, the lead story was not about free trade, but about Ex-Im, headlined “Playing Politics With Manufacturing Jobs.” In the past month, on the other hand, NAM’s “Shopfloor” blog has been hitting the TPA issue harder than Ex-Im.
NAM has employed big-name lobbyists Dick Gephardt and Haley Barbour to fight for Ex-Im renewal, but it hasn’t retained any outside lobbyists to work on TPA, according to federal lobbying disclosures.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leaning hard on Republican opponents of Ex-Im such as Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., running radio ads in their districts warning constituents that Ex-Im opposition is “Putting North Carolina jobs at risk — maybe even yours.”
Hudson, like Ryan and McConnell, is consistent on trade: he opposes export subsidies and he supports free trade. He’s supporting TPA — putting him on the same side as the Chamber in that fight — despite living in a district that is famously antagonistic to free trade.
Hudson is familiar with his district’s protectionist streak: Back when he was chief of staff to Rep. Robin Hayes, R, a textile plant shut down, resulting in thousands of layoffs and leaving Hudson to help these constituents find jobs, as McClatchy News service tells the story.
Now Hudson is sticking his neck out for free trade, siding with the Chamber of Commerce. The thanks he gets is a radio ad targeting his opposition to Ex-Im.
Meanwhile those Republican congressmen who stick their neck out to support Ex-Im — for instance Reps. Buddy Carter of Georgia and Stephen Fincher of Tennessee — get Chamber ads applauding them.
The industry groups singing songs of “free trade” while endorsing export subsidies may reek of hypocrisy. But Ex-Im supporters see hypocrisy in the anti-Ex-Im conservatives who want business’s help passing TPA.
“You can’t call them crony and then expect them to help you out,” one GOP strategist said.
This strife is inevitable, because many of these characters are consistently for free enterprise, while others are consistently for the business lobby.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.
