Time For A Call To Self-Confidence

Stroll down the King’s Road in Chelsea and here’s what you see: The Gap and Nine West, Starbuck’s, Safeway and, of course, Mickey D’s. School kids on a field trip carry notebooks emblazoned with Mickey M. Posters on buses and billboards promote singers Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez.

Practically every movie in town comes from Hollywood and theaters are featuring American musicals like “Saturday Night Fever” and “The Buddy Holly Story.” But that’s only the beginning. Signs advertise American stockbrokers, consulting firms and hotel chains. The European edition of Business Week recently concluded: “It’s clear that the Darwinian struggle for supremacy in European investment banking is largely over.” The big winners: three American firms, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

The point here is a simple one. American economic power is unleashed and unmatched. The United States has nothing to fear, and everything to gain, from enlarging trade with China, Europe, and the rest of the world.

President Clinton deserves credit for pursuing the deal that would bring China into the world trading system and open its markets to outside competition. But signing the pact with Beijing is only half the battle. Now, the president has to put all of his political muscle behind the agreement and force it through Congress next year.

Clinton frequently laments that he’s not been president during an age that demanded great leadership - war, depression, the struggle for equal rights. But history might well look back on the 1990s as the Age of Globalization. One of Clinton’s most lasting contributions would be cementing American leadership in this new economic universe. To do that, he has to sell the future to his own dubious supporters.

That won’t be easy. Protectionism is as old as commerce itself. Walking through an exhibit here on the history of London, we noted that 150 years ago, British silk and wool weavers were up in arms over a flood of cheap cotton imports.

European governments continue to bar American beef and bananas in defiance of repeated international rulings. France is furious over what the Paris daily, Le Monde, calls the cultural and commercial “hegemony” of American economic power. McDonald’s outlets have been trashed by French farmers and President Jacques Chirac cheers them on: “I am in complete solidarity with France’s farm workers and I detest McDonald’s.”

At home, labor leaders have trashed Clinton’s China deal as a “slap in the face” to American workers. Their opposition is understandable, if profoundly wrong. As a shrewd union boss told us years ago, unions only represent workers who have jobs now, not workers who might get jobs in the future, so their whole view of the world is backward-looking. Moreover, shuttered mills and locked gates are easy to dramatize on TV, while the plants that prosper from greater trade are less visible, and their workers are less organized.

Team Clinton has to reverse the impression that trade hurts more than it helps - and the numbers are clearly on its side. The team must mobilize Boeing workers in Seattle, grain farmers in Minnesota, stevedores in New Orleans and countless other Americans whose jobs depend on expanded commerce.

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is absolutely right when he says of the China deal: “This means more jobs for Americans. It means larger export markets for American producers to provide high-wage jobs. It means a more stable, competitive global economy.” But the Clinton administration has done a poor job of making that case and the deal could fail if it doesn’t get better at it. Beyond that, the White House has to harness the power of the American consumer. This Christmas, many families will be able to stretch their gift-giving dollars by purchasing inexpensive toys, textiles and tricycles made abroad. In many cases, these families don’t even realize how they benefit from free trade and they have to be educated.

Interestingly, one of Clinton’s strongest allies in the pro-trade battle could be Gov. George W. Bush. In a recent interview with us, he described himself as “firmly in the internationalist camp.” And, in practically every speech, he denounces protectionism as self-defeating. “It’s the fearful who build walls,” he likes to say, “and the confident who tear them down.”

Any walk through London - or Paris, Tokyo or Beijing - justifies that confidence. American workers can outproduce and outsell any competition anywhere. Clinton’s job now is to sell that confidence to American voters.