Follies: Treasury Secretary Gives New Meaning to the Term 'Snow Job'

TradeAlert.org ^ | Wednesday, August 20, 2003 | Alan Tonelson

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

We at GLOBALIZATION FOLLIES would be a lot more impressed with the Bush administration's promises to help domestic manufacturers if Treasury Secretary John Snow wasn't spending so much time coddling the Asian protectionists bedeviling them.

Not that we think for a minute that Asian currency revaluations would provide meaningful relief for U.S.-based industries. Asia's mercantilist governments would simply shift the forms of their economic predation, as they have done so often before. But why does Snow have to keep giving them excuses to stand pat?

On the now-infamous late-July trip Wisconsin road trip by Snow and two Cabinet colleagues, the Treasury Secretary waxed optimistic about China's receptiveness to freer exchange rates and promised to use "quiet diplomacy" to level the currency playing field. But he also pointedly observed "that China faces internal financial and economic barriers that would complicate efforts to alter its policy," according to one news account. For good measure, he told a Senate hearing later that week that "I frankly don't have a firm view" as to whether the yuan is undervalued, and suggested that he wouldn't know for sure until Treasury issued an annual currency report in October.

Snow has been even softer on Japan. "Japan is going through a tough set of things," he said on a European trip last month. "As they deal with those things, not going to be critical of them at all." In addition, Snow specified, "They need a strong export sector to get their reforms done."

Now it's possible that Snow has contracted the same strain of foot-in-mouth disease that infected his politically hapless predecessor Paul O'Neill -- in which case, the halls of Treasury clearly need a good fumugation. But it's also possible that he's speaking for a President who thinks there's nothing wrong with domestic industry that some political doubletalk won't fix.

(Sources: "Bush team stumps for economy," by Sue Kirchhoff, USA Today, July 30, 2003; "Snow in hot seat over yuan peg," Reuters, July 31, 2003; "U.S. official backs Japan on the yen," by Mark Landler, The New York Times, July 19, 2003)

Alan Tonelson is a Research Fellow at the U.S. Business & Industry Educational Foundation and the author of The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards (Westview Press).

[MonroeDNA]

[lelio]

Snow has contracted the same strain of foot-in-mouth disease that infected his politically hapless predecessor Paul O'Neill

Almost forgot about Paul. Bush is 0 for 2 in Treasury picks. He's 0 for 1 in Secretary of Labor picks too.

I almost like Chao, for purely comical reasons. She's always got that deer in the headlights look, can never appear on CNBC w/o Kudlow to guide her, and she's our own version of Baghdad Bob. "Rising Unemployment? That is good! Good I say!"

[syriacus]

THE COMING JOB BOOM: "The long-term tragedy is that offshoring can't snatch ENOUGH skilled US jobs."

This is a thread posted on FreeRepublic 2 weeks ago.

Only today it is showing up on Netscape's home page.

[Moby Grape]

And you guys are 0 for 1000 in predicting doom.