Protectionism Happens to Be Congress's Job

What should we do? First, we need to stop financing the elimination of jobs. Tax benefits for offshore production must end. Royalty deductions allowed for offshore activities must be eliminated, and tax havens for corporations must be closed down.

Next, we need an assistant attorney general to enforce our trade laws and agreements. At present, enforcement is largely left to an injured party. It can take years to jump over legal hurdles. Then at the end, based on national security, the president can refuse to implement a court order. Rather than waste time and money, corporate America has moved offshore.

We need to organize government to produce and protect jobs, rather than export them. The Commerce Department recently co-sponsored a New York seminar, part of which advised companies on how to move jobs offshore. This aid for exporting jobs must stop. The Department of Commerce should be reconstituted as a Department of Trade and Commerce, with the secretary as czar over the U.S. trade representative. The department's International Trade Administration should determine not only whether goods have been dumped on the U.S. market, but how big the "injury" is to U.S. industry. The International Trade Commission should be eliminated.

While it is illegal to sell foreign-made goods below cost in the U.S. market (a practice called dumping), we refuse to enforce such violations. The Treasury Department reports $2 billion worth of illegal transshipments of textiles into the United States each year. Customs agents charged with drug enforcement and homeland security are hard-pressed to stop these transshipments. We need at least 1,000 additional Customs agents.

It won't be easy. A culture of free trade has developed. The big banks that make most of their money outside the country, as well as the Business Roundtable, the Conference Board, the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation (whose members make bigger profits on imported articles) and the editorial writers of newspapers that make most of their profits from retail ads -- all these descend on Washington promoting "free trade" to members of Congress. Members looking for contributions shout the loudest.

Not just jobs, but also the middle class and the strength of our very democracy are in jeopardy. As Lincoln said, "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Today's dogma is the belief that protectionism will mean trade war and economic stagnation. But we are already in a trade war, one from which the president and the Congress are AWOL.

Ernest Hollings is the senior U.S. senator from South Carolina. A Democrat who has served seven terms in the Senate, he is retiring after his current term ends next year.