‘Call to action’ issued on trade accords
Wall St Journal ’Washington Wire’ blog | September 16, 2010
‘Call to Action’ issued on trade accords
By Elizabeth Williamson
Following a meeting of the President’s Export Council, council Chairman Jim McNerney expressed some urgency – or was it exasperation? – when it came to the issue of the administration’s progress on free trade agreements.
McNerney, Boeing Co.’s chief executive, and council Vice Chairman Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox Corp., were visiting briefly with reporters after Thursday’s meeting of the council, formed to help the president meet his goal of doubling U.S. exports within five years.
“There are 600 trade agreements being worked on right now around the world, and I think the U.S. is focused on single digits–which gives you an idea of the market share we’re losing because we don’t have the same deals as we come into big markets as other countries do,” he said.
“So this is a real call to action…I understand there are political issues associated with getting these done, but it is worth the candle to figure out a way to surmount those.”
The export council, he added, was not only pushing the White House to get the Korea deal done, but “Panama, and Colombia, and beyond that.”
President Barack Obama has vowed to unveil a revised Korea Free Trade Agreement at the Group of 20 meeting in Seoul in mid-November, and work on getting it through Congress soon after. But on Thursday, neither he nor Commerce Secretary Gary Locke – who has said the Korea agreement would “hopefully” be finished by November — reiterated that pledge.
“We’re …working to resolve outstanding issues with our free trade agreements with our key partners, like Korea, and to seek congressional approval as soon as possible,” Obama told the full council on Thursday. The president has kept mum on the agreement while on the campaign trail, where some Democrats are campaigning against the deal.
Locke said the president recognized that the agreements “have to be fair. There are some specific issues that have to be resolved in each of the different agreements so far…but the president recognizes that they can be a source of a lot of new jobs, good-paying jobs.”
Other CEOs who had been slated to attend the meeting were: Mary Vermeer Andringa, Vermeer; Stephanie Burns, Dow Corning; Scott Davis, UPS; Richard Friedman, Carpenter & Company, Inc.; Gene Hale, G&C Equipment Corp.; C. Robert Henrikson, MetLife; William Hite, United Association; Robert Iger, Walt Disney; Charles Kaye, Warburg Pincus; Jeffrey Kindler, Pfizer; Andrew Liveris, Dow Chemical; Robert Mandell, Meritage Homes of Florida; Raul Pedraza, Magno International; Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon; James Turley, Ernst & Young; and Patricia Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland.
