WorldCity Business Magazine

Ready or not

by Jeffrey Sparshott

Rob Portman, the Bush administration’s new U.S. trade representative, won’t have time to catch his breath.

For the first few months of his new job, he will be at the center of the biggest domestic trade debate since NAFTA, he will oversee the most ambitious global trade talks since the World Trade Organization was created, and he may have to wade into nasty fights with major trade partners.

Portman served as part of Ohio’s congressional delegation for more than a decade, where he compiled a record as a relatively free trader and became close to President Bush.

The 49-year old is an administration confidante The New York Times called him "President Bush’s man in the House" yet someone who also managed to stay above the worst part of partisan politics.

“Rob Portman is well-liked and well-respected for his intelligence, experience, and willingness to work with both sides of the aisle to get things done,” said Montana Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that writes trade law.

Mr. Portman will need every bit of support he can get, both from the White House and his former colleagues in Congress, to be successful.

He will also be thrown in to the Central American Free Trade Agreement cauldron. Congressional hearings began in April and a vote could come as soon as the end of this month, though administration officials are trying to calibrate their timing so the House and Senate move at about the same pace. The Senate is slower, and may force a later vote.

CAFTA, with the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, is the biggest trade agreement since the sound-alike NAFTA, with Canada and Mexico. It will be the toughest test for Bush administration trade policy and faces an uphill battle.

If CAFTA dies, so will a raft of other bilateral pacts.

Then there is the WTO. The current round of talks would not have started without U.S. leadership, and would already be abandoned without U.S. resolve. Mr. Portman has to maintain that role leading up to a meeting of the organization’s 148 trade ministers in Hong Kong this December. Two of the last three times all 148 countries held such a summit, talks collapsed.

They may again. Mr. Portman will have to help forge an ambitious agreement that deals with how much U.S., European and Japanese governments can give to their farmers, the cost of drugs for AIDS patients in poor countries, corruption in third-world customs agencies, how much orange juice Brazil can sell to the United States you get the picture.

And then there are the trade fights. Congress is livid that the U.S. trade deficit is rapidly expanding, especially with China. Congressmen want quotas on textiles, tariffs across the board and punishment every time a Chinese company illegally copies a Disney DVD or knocks off a Zippo lighter.

The administration is moving toward some limited protection for select industries and building a case against China’s pirates. Mr. Portman will have to convince lawmakers that he is doing enough, and the Chinese that he isn’t doing too much.

The big fight with the European Union involves Airbus, a European consortium that manufactures aircraft, and Boeing, the Chicago-based company that has slipped to become the world’s number two supplier of commercial airplanes.

The United States wants Europe to stop giving low cost, no risk loans to Airbus, while Europe wants the United States to stop complaining.

If the fight cannot be negotiated, the WTO would have to digest the biggest case in its history and would probably rebuke both sides for billions of dollars in government handouts.

There are numerous other spats that will require attention, including potentially explosive fights with Europe about genetically modified crops, and with Brazil about farm subsidies.

Bush also mentioned the Free Trade Area of the Americas by name when he nominated Mr. Portman as his top trade envoy, but that deal is on life support. “I’ve asked him to take on a bold agenda,” Mr. Bush said in March when he nominated the next U.S. trade representative.

Mr. Bush, known for his sense of humor, wasn’t joking.