May 29, 2015
John Delaney, a Democratic congressperson from Maryland, argued against a “left-wing” Tea Party in a Washington Post column today. He gets many things badly wrong, like arguing:
“bipartisan tax reform that would free up the trillions of dollars of trapped overseas cash” which he says could be used for infrastructure spending. Sorry, corporations do have trillions in profits that they record as being overseas to avoid taxes, but the idea that we have some formula that would turn all this money into tax revenue for infrastructure is more than a bit loopy. He also seems to think that a modest expansion of Social Security, as proposed by people like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, would impose some impossible tax burden.
But my favorite part is when he denounces the opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as protectionists. I must confess to not knowing exactly what is in the agreement (it is secret), but we do know from Wikileaks that an important part of the TPP is increasing protectionism in the form of stronger and longer copyright and patent protection.
Since we already have trade agreements with most of the countries in the TPP, there will not be very much by way of tariff reduction in the TPP. In other words, the trade liberalization parts of the TPP will be relatively minor. Given this fact, it is entirely possible that the increase in copyright and patent protections will have more economic impact than the modest reductions in the remaining tariff barriers. (Remember patent protection can increase the price of a drug by a hundredfold, the equivalent of a 10,000 percent tariff barrier.)
Until it is shown otherwise, it is reasonable to call the TPP a protectionist pact. We know that it will increase protectionism in important areas. We don’t know how much it will liberalize trade and therefore have zero basis for assuming that on net it moves in the direction of freer trade.
So Mr. Delaney, if it’s name-calling time, right back at you. As a TPP supporter, you are a protectionist.
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