Earlier this month, President Biden signed into law a bill prohibiting a rail strike and imposing a deal rejected by over half of unionized rail workers over its lack of paid sick leave. Labor activists have condemned Biden and Democratic Party leaders for failing to secure paid time off for workers who become ill.
James Thuo Gathii, Loyola University Chicago
AGOA was the signature economic policy of the Bill Clinton administration. It provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the US market for over 1,800 products. It is set to expire in 2025 but is up for discussion at the annual forum on AGOA taking place alongside the US-African Leaders Summit (13-15 December 2022).
The Trump administration preferred to negotiate bilateral trade deals with African countries.
A free trade agreement negotiation with Kenya in early 2020 was supposed “to serve as a model bilateral deal for other African countries”.
I have been studying Africa’s trade deals and trade blocs for over 25 years. I was one of the zero-draft authors of the Africa continental free trade area, and have assessed regional blocs, the World Trade Organisation and the AGOA.
My view is that African leaders should seek a renewal of AGOA. The individual bilateral trade agreements would undermine the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. One of the goals of the continental market is to boost intra-Africa trade and encourage production of higher value exports.
The Biden administration’s trade agenda continues to be greatly influenced by US multinational corporations that want access to African markets.
For example, in July 2022, the US launched a US-Kenya Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Although the agenda is less ambitious than the Trump administration’s, it poses many risks for Kenya. For example, the proposed regime may require lifting of tariffs on agricultural imports from the US, exposing Kenyan farmers to an onslaught of highly subsidised US exports.
The proposed deal’s call for “good regulatory practices” imply rollback of public-interest administrative processes in favour of foreign corporations. For instance, African governments may have to give up regulations on environment, labour, consumer and public health whenever deemed to be barriers to foreign investments.
Likewise, the “digital trade agenda” is likely to be harmful. This agenda requires governments to protect the interests of the biggest technology companies. That often happens at the expense of smaller domestic firms and their workers. The digital agenda is therefore likely to entrench the ability of big-tech companies to undermine national laws on competition and data privacy. These are all undesirable consequences that Africa should avoid.
A high proportion of exports from Africa to the US have been precious stones and metals, such as platinum and diamonds, as well as mineral fuels and apparel. These exports reflect the continued inability of African economies to move away from primary products to industrial production.
Moving African products onto higher rungs of the global value chain requires at least two things: increased intra-Africa trade and international market policy support.
More intra-African trade would produce savings that could be reinvested into producing higher value products. For example, billions of dollars invested in buying food from outside Africa could be reinvested in agro-processing firms if intra-African food trade became successful, as contemplated under the continental market.
Similarly, countries like the US can reorient their trade and investment policies to support the development of productive capacities and value addition of African agriculture, trade and services.
Unless African economies are able to produce higher value exports, they will continue to earn minimal returns from global trade.
One of the complicating factors for Africa is the sheer diversity of interests in each of the 55 member states of the African Union. There are the least developed economies like Burundi, on one hand, and sub-regional powers like South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, on the other. Balancing the competing interests among these countries has been one of the stumbling blocks to realising the vision of a continental market. These differences have also manifested themselves in negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.
Pursuing bilateral trade deals with the US will probably burden African economies with trade obligations that disproportionately favour highly subsidised US industries.
The US, for example, heavily subsidises agriculture. Bilateral trade deals will likely overwhelm Africa’s agricultural sector. This will in turn undermine the continent’s industrialisation goals.
Going for the extension of AGOA beyond 2025 isn’t an easy route. This is because, as the US has pointed out, few African countries that qualify for AGOA benefits have used them fully. Of 36 African countries eligible to bring in their exports to the US duty free, almost none fully utilises this preferential access.
Choosing AGOA could also mean having to give up the aim of growing domestic industries that can export products of high value. For example, Rwanda’s apparel AGOA benefits were suspended in July 2018 after Rwanda banned imports of secondhand clothes to support its own apparel industry. Kenya faced the same dilemma but chose AGOA benefits.
So, supporting renewal of Agoa may under certain conditions come at a price: the ability to become makers and exporters of high-value products.
There is one issue where African countries should speak in one voice. US-Africa trade relations must be designed in a way that does not undermine the African continental free trade area’s goal of increasing intra-African trade.
This goal could save Africa billions of dollars annually by buying goods produced within the continent.
African countries should not sacrifice their collective goal of promoting intra-African trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area, and other sub-regional groups like the East African Community, by negotiating bilateral trade deals that will disproportionately favour US industries while hurting African firms.
James Thuo Gathii, Professor of law , Loyola University Chicago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin escalated the war by announcing a mobilization of up to 300,000 extra troops (CNBC, 9/21/22) and threatened to use “all the means at our disposal” to ensure “the territorial integrity of our motherland” (CNBC, 9/23/22). A month later, a letter endorsed by 30 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus was sent to the White House (and quickly retracted), urging a “proactive diplomatic push” to reach a ceasefire in the war.
Both of these major incidents could have been an opportunity for the media to ask important questions about US policy in Ukraine, which is—according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (Wall Street Journal, 4/25/22)—to “weaken” Russia. Instead, elite newspapers continue to offer a very narrow range of expert opinion on a US strategy that favors endless war.
Aside from Vladimir Putin, this New York Times article (9/21/22) is entirely sourced to “American and other Western officials,” “White House and Pentagon officials,” “Western officials,” the Pentagon press secretary, the British military secretary, President Biden “and other administration officials,” “current and former US military officials,” a National Security Council spokesperson, the director of Russia studies at the Pentagon-funded Center for Naval Analyses, “a former top US Army commander in Europe,” “experts,” a Russian military specialist (and former Marine) at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, “American officials and analysts,” “a former supreme allied commander for Europe,” “US intelligence and other security officials,” “officials,” “a senior State Department official” and the head of the US Strategic Command.
In the two days following Putin’s threats, the New York Times published three pieces assessing them. Of these pieces, expert analysis and commentary was provided by “military analysts” and a “director of Russia studies at the CNA defense research” (9/21/22), a “French author” and “a former French ambassador to Russia” (9/21/22), and several current and former government officials (9/21/22).
In these articles, probably the most critical comment was provided by nameless “Western officials” who have “expressed concern that if Mr. Putin felt cornered, he might detonate a tactical nuclear weapon”—though the Times immediately reassured that “they said there was no evidence that he was moving those weapons, or preparing such a strike.” None of the officials or analysts that the Times referenced in these articles explicitly advocated for changing US policy.
In the same timeframe, the Wall Street Journal ran six articles assessing Putin’s actions, and did not find any space in these articles to criticize US policy.
Russian public opinion of the war was cited in one piece (9/21/22):
Public interest in the invasion was initially high in February but has been declining steadily—especially among young people, who would presumably be those asked to serve in the fighting, according to a poll by the independent Levada Center earlier this month. Younger people were also far more likely to favor peace negotiations, the poll results said.
Strangely, the Journal did not cite US public opinion on peace negotiations in any of its coverage. A poll commissioned by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (9/27/22) found most American likely voters supported the US engaging in peace negotiations. Supporting this, an IPSOS poll has reported that most Americans support the US continuing “its diplomatic efforts with Russia” (10/6/22). I did not find a single Journal article that mentioned the Quincy Institute or IPSOS polls. The Journal has done its own polling on American opinion regarding the war (e.g., 11/3/22, 3/11/22); it does not ask for opinions about diplomacy as a strategy.
The Quincy and IPSOS polls are in line with Americans’ attitudes from a Gallup poll taken prior to the war, which found 73% of Americans “say that good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace” (12/17/19). It seems Americans generally favor diplomacy. A more recent Gallup poll (9/15/22) did not ask about Americans’ support for diplomacy, but whether the US was “doing enough,” which is a vague question that obfuscates whether it refers to military, diplomatic support, or other means. It also asked a question that presented only two approaches for the US to take toward conflict: “support Ukraine in reclaiming territory, even if prolonged conflict” or “end conflict quickly, even if allow Russia to keep territory.” Other diplomatic options, such as those regarding NATO’s ever-expanding footprint in Eastern Europe, were not offered.
Part of the reason it was so easy to make progressives back away from their pro-diplomacy letter (Intercept, 10/25/22) is that the views behind the letter rarely appear in major media.
The October letter calling on the White House to consider a diplomatic end to the war was signed by 30 members of Congress and endorsed by a number of nonprofit groups, including the Quincy Institute (Intercept, 10/25/22).
To get a sense of how much tolerance there has been for dissenting expertise on the White House’s stance in the Ukraine war, I searched the Nexis news database for mentions of the Quincy Institute. As a Washington think tank backed by major establishment funders spanning the political spectrum, including both George Soros and Charles Koch (Boston Globe, 6/30/19), journalists should have little reservation in soliciting comments from experts associated with it.
In a Nexis search as of November 9, the Quincy Institute was mentioned nine times in the New York Times since February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine; five of these were in opinion pieces. Of the four reported pieces, two (7/3/22, 9/27/22) included quotes from members of the Institute that were critical of US military strategy in Ukraine.
On the website of the Wall Street Journal, which is not fully indexed on Nexis, I turned up a single mention of the Quincy Institute in connection with Ukraine, in a piece (3/23/22) on Ukrainian lobbyists’ influence in the US.
Despite exposés that show CSIS literally functions as a PR organ for the weapons industry (Extra!, 10/16), the think continues to be a favorite source of establishment media.
That lack of coverage is all the more stark in comparison to a hawkish think tank. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), heavily funded by the US government, arms dealers and oil companies, is a consistently pro-war think tank: A FAIR investigation (Extra!, 10/16) of a year’s worth of CSIS op-eds and quotes in the New York Times failed to find any instance of the CSIS advocating for curtailment of US military policy.
At the Journal, a search for “Center for Strategic and International Studies” in Ukraine stories from February 24 to November 9 yielded 34 results. Four of these results were opinion pieces. For news articles, that’s a 30:1 ratio of the hawkish think tank to the dovish think tank.
In the same time period, CSIS appeared in the Times 44 times, according to a Nexis search, including five opinion pieces—a news ratio of just under 10:1.
It should be noted that, just as Quincy sources weren’t always quoted offering criticism of US Ukraine policy, affiliates of CSIS weren’t always advocating for an unrestrained stance in Ukraine. One even warned that “the risk of a widening war is serious right now” (New York Times, 4/27/22). But repeatedly reaching out to and publishing quotes from a well-known pro-war think tank will inevitably produce less critical reporting of a war than turning to the most prominent anti-war think tank in Washington.
And it’s not that these papers are seeking out “balance” from sources other than Quincy. Seven other nonprofit groups also endorsed the October letter; the New York Times has quoted a representative from one of those groups—Just Foreign Policy—exactly once (3/7/22) since the war began. The Journal has cited none. But considering the stakes at hand, reporters have a responsibility to seek out and publish such critical perspectives in their coverage of Ukraine.
Photo Credit: Neon Tommy
Originally published on FAIR.org, December 2, 2022. Reprinted with permission.
