A few days ago, I posted on yet another Bush administration sellout on free trade — the imposition of tariffs on catfish. Rather insignificant, you might have thought. How much damage could restrictions on catfish imports really do?

A thoughtfull, well-written Washington Post piece goes into more detail. As it turns out, catfish is a top export of Vietnam, an emerging economy with whom the U.S. just reoponed trade relations. The new restrictions — which will protect catfish-related jobs in the deep red-state south — are bound to do some serious damage to the Vietnamese economy, and make U.S. credibility on free trade — already imperiled — all the more laughable.

Two paragraphs from the piece present a tidy sum of the opposing forces:

The duties set by Commerce are aimed at saving from possible extinction an industry that employs about 13,000 people — mostly in economically depressed areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas — many of them “mothers coming off government assistance, single moms who have never had a job before, breaking a cycle of poverty,” according to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.).

vs.

The catfish case is particularly galling to critics of the anti-dumping rules because of the setback it dealt Vietnam only 18 months after the socialist government in Hanoi signed an agreement with its former enemy in Washington restoring “normal trade relations.” To secure the accord, which ended the high U.S. tariffs imposed on Vietnamese products since the two sides were at war, Vietnam agreed to lower its own obstacles to trade. Now the catfish issue has erupted into a major controversy in Vietnam, where the media are full of stories about how Washington is blocking one of the few products with which the impoverished nation has a comparative advantage.

More than 40,000 fish farmers from the Mekong Delta signed a letter to U.S. officials protesting the decision, saying it “ignores the trend toward competition and integration according to established international practices, not to mention the great difficulties it causes our way of life,” the Vietnamese press reported.

It’s rare that a big media outlet goes into such depth on a trade issue. Too often, pieces like this focus solely on those out-of-work catfish laborors who, sadly, just crept off of welfare.

Yes, you feel for them. But if American consumers would rather have inexpensive, frozen Vietnamese catfish fillets than fresh Bayou fish, then those catfish farms in the delta just aren’t legitimate businesses, and propping them up with tariffs or subsidies at the expense of catfish lovers flies in the face of every principle this adminstration ever publicly claimed to subscribe to when it comes to trade.

Did I say “principled” and “Bush administration” in the same sentence?

My bad.

This of course is just the latest decision from an administration with an absolutely abysmal record on trade. At least there were colorable political explanations to fall back on with the steel tariffs — we were at least (arguably) talking about important constituencies in electorally competitive states (though that certainly doesn’t excuse the policy).

But what kind of spineless administration can’t even stand up to the friggin’ catfish lobby?

But I’m sure the decision was an easy one. Like most protectionist measures, the groups that have the most to lose are naturally the most vocal — the prudent decision never riles the masses, because the costs for such policies are shared by everyone who’s ever to eat a catfish.

So the cost of saving the jobs of catfish farmers in the deep south (while starving Vietnamese farmers in the process) is barely noticeable once it’s spread out over millions of plates of catfish dinner.

And given that the “catfish belt” is rock-hard, red-state conservative, and that the left will always be loathe to criticize tariffs that protect the working poor, there isn’t a caucus in the country that Bush needs to worry about offending by enacting the barrier.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2003 at 1:05 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.