House Dems Reiterate Criticism of USTR Use of Reexports in Trade Flow Data

July 14, 2014 by Brian Dabbs|Congress

A group of 14 House Democrats renewed a call for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to stop incorporating reexports in monthly export data, calling the practice an artificial inflation and manipulation of the statistics. The lawmakers, led by vocal trade policy critics Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., George Miller, D-Calif., and Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., lambasted the way USTR uses Census Bureau trade data in a letter to USTR Michael Froman. Should USTR decide to continue the practice, the lawmakers threatened to oppose both Trade Promotion Authority and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) implementation legislation.

The U.S. International Trade Commission removes the transshipped foreign exports from the Census data to accurately portray U.S. export levels, said the lawmakers. But when the USTR compiles its own export data, it does not, resulting in inaccuracies. “In the case of USTR’s NAFTA data misrepresentations, this means counting foreign-made goods that are shipped through the United States en route to Canada or Mexico; for instance, goods taken off a ship from China in a California port and then trucked to their final destination in northern Mexico would count as U.S. exports in this assessment, despite being produced overseas,” said the letter. “These foreign-made re-exports do not support U.S. production jobs and should not be conflated with U.S.-made exports.”

The skewed trade flow data likely portrays a more optimistic perspective on the impacts of free trade agreements, as the U.S. continues to negotiate the high-profile TPP and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership pacts, said the letter. “Congress relies on USTR for accurate, transparent and timely information in order to fulfill our trade-related legislative responsibilities, so we believe that USTR must immediately begin better fulfilling that mission in order for us to work together constructively on a positive trade agenda,” said the letter.