Obama Administration Discovers Trade–As Another Great Excuse to Grow Government!

James M. Roberts / February 04, 2010

President Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke, rolled out the administration’s new “National Export Initiative (NEI)” today at the National Press Club.  The way Secretary Locke described it, the NEI sounds like a great vehicle to create jobs—government jobs.

Secretary Locke began by saying that the “NEI represents the first time the United States will have a government-wide export-promotion strategy with focused attention from the president and his Cabinet,” ignoring the prior administration’s success in negotiating free trade agreements with more than a dozen countries between 2001 and 2009.  NEI’s main features are:

– more “robust” efforts to help small- and medium-sized enterprises, through the Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) “Gold Key” program (Sec. Locke made it sound like something brand new—actually “Gold Key” has been around for more than 20 years).

-President Obama’s “Export Cabinet” wants to hire more U.S. Government (USG) bureaucrats “to advocate for U.S. business” and channel more taxpayer dollars into “export promotion activities” at the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture. (more…)