Kick Me, I'm For Free Trade.

• Author: Lindsey, Brink

With the WTO under siege, free-traders need a new strategy.

For those of you who didn't get your fill of World Trade Organization bashing from the demonstrators in Seattle, you can look forward to more of the same this spring--this time in the other Washington. In all likelihood Congress will soon be voting on whether the United States should remain a member of the trade body.

When the United States entered the WTO back in 1995 at the close of the Uruguay Round of trade talks, a time bomb was slipped into the implementing legislation. Section 125 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act allows any member of Congress to propose a joint resolution this year to withdraw authorization for U.S. membership in the WTO. Such a resolution would then be considered under special, expedited procedures. While there's almost no chance that the measure could really be enacted into law, it's conceivable that the House of Representatives might pass it. For that to occur would deal another serious blow to the WTO's already battered prestige.

The sad fact is that, in this country at least, the WTO has become a giant, flashing "Kick Me" sign affixed to the free trade cause. In light of that fact, it's worth remembering why creating the WTO ever made sense. It wasn't because of any mercantilist nonsense about "fair trade." As any Economics 101 textbook will tell you, we benefit from opening our own markets regardless of what other countries do. And it certainly wasn't because of any woolly-headed notion that a world economy needs a world government. That's the last thing it needs.

No, the only good reason for having a body like the WTO is to make it politically easier for our own government, and for governments abroad, to reduce restrictions on trade and investment flows. International trade agreements facilitate liberalization by adding the sugar of improved market access abroad to the political medicine of increased exposure to foreign competition at home. As a result, exporting interests eager to penetrate foreign markets are induced to lobby for the free trade cause. And once barriers have fallen, it's harder to backtrack toward renewed protectionism when doing so violates an international obligation. To cite just one recent example, Congress last year voted down import quotas on foreign steel in large part because of an unwillingness to flout the WTO's ban on such restrictions.

But if the WTO is supposed to reduce and deflect protectionist pressures, it clearly...