I will switch to football analyses next week. That is unacceptable, but it is what happens when the United States engages in unilateral disarmament on trade. The authority for a President to negotiate tariff reductions goes back as far as Franklin Roosevelt's first term when his administration sought to reduce the damage caused by the Smoot-Hawley Act. Fast track, itself, has been available and used to America's economic benefit by every president for the past two decades. But the current debate is about more than dollars and cents.
Fast track is a foreign policy imperative.
It is indispensable to US economic leadership, and that leadership is indispensable to US influence around the globe. American prestige and power are not divisible. If we want our views and interests respected, we cannot sit on the sideline with a towel over our heads while others make the trade and investment plays that will determine the economic standings of the 21 st Century. In many capitals, if we have nothing to say on trade, we will find it harder to have productive discussions on other issues of direct importance to American interests. This was brought home to me yet again during my trips with the President to South and Central America and the Caribbean.