The U.S. Senate Approves Fast-Track for Pacific Trade Deal: Overstating the General Will

The way the world works is not in itself reason enough to dismiss the possibility of an ideal being more fully realized, and to refuse to take practical steps to its realization. Horse-trading is a staple in politics. The expression “making sausage” is typically used to refer to political horse-trading because people generally do not know—nor do they want to know—how sausage gets made; and it is probably best that way, at least according to the politicians. I propose that we “get under the hood” anyway, because only then can we ask ourselves whether political horse-trading is overused; a better way may be possible and even practical under some conditions.

Political horse-trading occurs when one elected representative (Mr. X) agrees to go along with another representative’s (Mr. Y) piece of legislation, which isn’t very important to X’s constituents but is to Y’s, in exchange for Y’s vote on another bill, which isn’t important to Y’s constituents but is to X’s folks back home. With enough support and horse-trading both bills stand a good chance of becoming law, whereas without the practice perhaps neither bill would pass. Although the legislative output of the legislative chamber is increased, that the support for each bill is overstated—the votes in favor being more than the number of representatives who support the legislation itself. A minority of representatives in the chamber may be for drilling for oil in natural parks, for example, but a bill whose express purpose is to permit such activity by oil companies could pass anyway due to horse-trading. The general will as per the representatives as a whole would not be in line with the legislation passed, meaning theoretically at least that the will of the people would not be in favor of drilling; so is more legislative output necessarily a good thing in a representative democracy? Rousseau would point to the general will as having been thwarted by ambitious politicians looking out narrowly for the particular will of their respective constituencies or even just themselves. Out of an original social contract comes “a moral and collective body made up of as many members as the assembly has voices, and which receives by this same act its unity, its common self, its life and its will.”[1] This will is the general will. If particular interests make out well at the expense of the good of the whole, then the general will is thwarted or compromised. Hence, horse-trading may not be justified by its facilitative impact in terms of legislative output.

In May 2015, the U.S. Senate rebuffed the U.S. President’s request to have the proposed Pacific trade treaty (PTT) voted “up or down” without amendments (i.e., “fast-track” authority). The U.S. House of Representatives had already approved the fast-track authority. In spite of Democratic senators claiming that workers would not be adequately protected as the trade deal had been negotiated, enough of those senators turned around and voted a week or so later to end the debate. Sixty-two senators voted for cloture, enabling the fast-track authority to go through. The U.S. president and the Senate’s majority leader had enough power to do the necessary horse-trading.

The vote nearly failed—being a few votes shy of the 60 needed to end debate. “It only succeeded after about a dozen senators engaged in a tense discussion in the middle of the Senate floor, well after the time for the vote had expired.”[2] The bending of the Senate’s rules on the duration of the vote is itself suspect; it could be the smoke over cloaked horse-trading. According to several U.S. senators, "the key was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promising Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to have a vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, which backs loans in places where there might not otherwise be sufficient funding to purchase products from the United States. A key beneficiary is Boeing, in Cantwell's state."[3] Does this constitute horse-trading, or would the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank make the Pacific trade deal better for U.S. workers?

As an instance of corporate welfare, the Bank would primarily benefit American businesses that export to the impoverished countries getting the loans. The companies’ shareholders and to some degree the workers would also benefit from the additional business. Even so, reauthorizing the Bank would not mean that workers in countries that are party to the TPP would be protected or that the free-trade deal would not result in American workers being laid off. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. contended at the time that 700,000 jobs in the U.S. had been lost or displaced due to NAFTA.[4] Presumably the figure would not have been higher without the corporate welfare that the Export-Import Bank was dolling out. We can conclude, therefore, that Cantwell’s horse-trade with McConnell did nothing to remove Cantwell’s concerns about worker-protections under the TPP—assuming she really had concerns!

Moreover, we can conclude that the support for fast-tracking the TPP deal was less than 62 senators who voted in favor of ending debate, since the horse-trading made the difference in the cloture vote. In effect, McConnell broadened the scope of the vote by making a promise regarding another issue. In doing so, he blurred the general will and thus compromised the democratic principle wherein the people’s representatives vote on the merits of the same thing—rather than some of the representatives essentially voting on one thing and other representatives voting on something else. The legislative output is greater, but so is the risk that bad legislation will go into effect.

What if legislative votes were like straw polls wherein each representative would be asked what he or she thinks of a proposal, such as drilling in national parks. The matter requires judgment as well as information. Looking into an issue and making a judgment on it is what elected lawmakers are presumably supposed to do. Political horse-trading impedes or compromises the judgment and perhaps even the information-gathering. To be sure, judgment is involved in deciding which bills to trade; however, this sort of judgment is not the same as judgment on a particular issue, with a vote ensuring from it. Theoretically at least, being satisfied as a country with legislative output reflecting legislative judgments on the respective bills, rather than informally grouping them so they all get through, has the benefit of better public policy unless the lawmakers’ judgment capacity is bad (i.e., voters making bad choices in who they vote for). Put another way, if enough senators (technically, states) judged that the PTT negotiated by the Obama administration would be a bad treaty, then the fast-track status should not have been approved; the check-and-balance in the Senate’s power to ratify treaties would be of value.

Practically speaking, Obama and McConnell could not be expected to hold back on using their power to reach 60 votes. To assume otherwise would be tantamount to expecting a stream to run uphill. Horse-trading could be made illegal, but enforcement would be a bitch given the nature of the beast. Making use of referendums at the policy level, such as whether the U.S. Government funds should cover abortion, or whether pot should be legalized, would preempt legislative horse-trading, though voters could of course use their vote in a referendum for another purpose rather than to signify their judgment on the issue at hand. Even so, considering the prevalence of horse-trading in legislative chambers, the general will stands a better shot at being reflected if referenda are included on ballots. Voting only for a candidate—theoretically in part because of the candidate’s good judgment—implies that he or she would use it on issues rather than merely to horse-trade well. The prevalence of legislative horse-trading means that the electorate should not rely so much on voting to fill offices; some direct democracy should also be in the mix. Perhaps then legislative rules (with teeth) clamping down on horse-trading would be enough to pick up the slack. Even more idealistically, perhaps voters might vote for candidates who find contributing to the general will rather than obfuscating it to be fulfilling and of value. Of course, if the electorate deems (i.e., the general will) that good legislation is the aggregation of bills satisfying various parts (i.e., constituencies) of the whole, then the voters will favor candidates who value horse-trading. To the extent that such candidates get elected (and reelected) even though the majority of the voters believe that their representative should use his or her judgment on each issue rather than horse-trade, then at least part of the problem lies with representative democracy itself.

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1. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, The Social Contract, in The Social Contract and Other Political Writings, Victor Gourevitch, ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 50.

2. Michael McAuliff, “Senate Advances Fast-Track for Obama Trade Deals,” The Huffington Post, May 21, 2015.

3. Ibid.

4. Kevin Granville, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal: What It Would Mean,” The New York Times, May 11, 2015.

Banks Guilty of Colluding to Set Euro-Dollar Exchange-Rate Basis: Toward a Competitive Market

In May 2015, Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and the Royal Bank of Scotland both acknowledged colluding to set the “fix” rate in foreign exchange markets, and agreed both to change their internal cultures and pay criminal fines of over $2.5 billion.[1] The U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, stated that her department would “vigorously prosecute all those who tilt the economic system in their favor; who subvert our marketplaces; and who enrich themselves at the expense of American customers.”[2] I submit that this does not go far enough, given the size and power of the banks and the condition of the sector.

Private gain at the expense of the public good is an old story. Corporations give to Congressional campaigns at least in part in hopes of being able to bend federal lawmakers to insert and approve a loophole that would keep the good of the whole from constraining quite so much the particular private interests. To be viable in the long term, a republic—even a republic of republics—must privilege the public good over potentially overweening private interests; otherwise, the implicit message can only be that anything goes—provided a company’s head knows where to send the dollars.

In using “a private electronic chatroom to manipulate the spot market’s exchange rate between euros and dollars using coded language to conceal their collusion,” the banks, or “The Cartel” as they referred to their group, “acted as partners—rather than competitors—in an effort to push the exchange rate in directions favorable to their banks but detrimental to many others.”[3] In other words, the banks acted as price-makers rather than price-takers; the market could not, therefore, be considered competitive. I submit that Lynch did not go far enough in settling for an acknowledgement of wrong-doing, promised change of internal cultures, and a fine; they do necessarily result in a competitive marketplace. Lynch said that the “penalty all these banks will now pay is fitting considering the long-running and egregious nature of their anticompetitive conduct” as well as “the pervasive harm done.”[4] Perhaps this so in terms of the size of the fine, but in giving the public confidence that the market would from then on be competitive. If firms in an industry are large enough that four of them colluding can set a price or rate, then the industry is oligarchic. To move it to a competitive basis, governmental action breaking up the largest firms (including in terms of ownership) is necessary. The justification lies in the value of the public good when economic liberty and property rights threaten to compromise the good of the whole.

To be sure, the U.S. Government would only be able to break up Citicorp and JPMorgan. Lest it be claimed that the resulting smaller firms would have less wherewithal to compete with Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland (as well as other banks), shedding less profitable divisions and focusing on developing a specialty-area can result in higher profits (i.e., from the sale of premium goods). Had lawmakers and President Obama given the U.S. Government the authority to break up financial institutions that have an unacceptable level of system risk (i.e, that a bank’s collapse could paralyze the entire financial system given the impact of high volatility on the market mechanism adjusting for risk), breaking up the largest American banks would not only make the sector more competitive, but also reduce the banks’ respective systemic risks. Were a crisis and ensuing short-sellers’ run on the banks occur, holding more dollars in reserves might not buy a bank much more time. It did not take long for Lehman Brothers to run through its cash once the short-sellers set in.

In short, the U.S. Attorney General could have taken a more systemic view and a related pro-active approach oriented beyond holding the banks accountable by including measures that would have provided the public with more confidence that the sector would be more competitive in the future.

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1. Loretta Lynch, “Attorney General Lynch Delivers Remarks at a Press Conference on Foreign Exchange Spot Market Manipulation,” The U.S. Department of Justice, May 20-, 2015.

2. Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4. Ibid. Lynch said that the banks’ concerted actions “inflated the banks’ profits while harming countless consumers, investors and institutions around the globe—from pension funds to major corporations, and including the banks’ own customers—who placed their faith in the market and relied on it to produce a competitive exchange rate.” Ibid.

President Obama Overreaching on Trade

Throughout the twentieth century, the U.S. Government grabbed more and more power from the governments of the member-states. Even within the U.S. Government, presidents have tended to over-reach. Specifically, they have put their role in proposing legislation and treaties above their role as that government’s chief executive in enforcing existing laws. In May 2015, Sen. Elizabeth Warren issued a report whose thesis is that presidents of both parties had failed to enforce the labor-provisions in the existing trade treaties. That the current president, Barak Obama, was in the midst of negotiating yet another trade treaty said to have labor provisions included opens him up to the charge of over-reaching. That is to say, rather than focusing first on enforcing existing trade arrangements to which the U.S. was then a party, he was going beyond—that is, over-reaching—to negotiate yet another deal. Such over-reaching is akin to going beyond the negative legislative power in vetoing legislation to spend a lot of time proposing legislation at the expense of devoting time to running the executive branch as its chief executive and conferring with members of Congress on ways to improve the administration of existing law. In this essay, I use Warren’s report as a means into answering why the overreaching habit has become so ubiquitous among American presidents that the electorate barely recognizes it as such.

Citing analyses from the Government Accountability Office, the State Department, and the Department of Labor, Warren’s report claims that the U.S. Government “does not enforce the labor protections in its trade agreements.”[1] Eleven countries in which the U.S. had trade treaties with had “documented reliance on child labor, forced labor or other human rights abuses related to labor.”[2] After the Obama administration finalized a labor action-plan with Colombia in 2011—a deal Obama called a “win-win for workers”—105 union activist were murdered as of May 2015.[3] Given the opportunity cost of the foregone benefits of alternatives not pursued in taking a course of action such as negotiating another trade deal, Barak Obama’s decision to pursue a Pacific trade treaty put him on a course that did not make enforcement of existing trade treaties a priority. This is a bit like going out shopping to get more stuff rather than spending Sunday cleaning out the messy garage. That is to say, the mentality is the same; and yet, how often is it applied to a U.S. president? Moreover, what is behind it?

The way in which U.S. presidents are selected—by which I mean the process—may give us a clue. At the nominating stage, the emphasis is on campaigning by proposing and selling policies. “If elected, I will create an X,” for example. “If elected, I will push Congress to enact Y.” While such an approach is consistent with leadership, the emphasis comes at the expense of administration. Rarely do presidential candidates say, for example, “If elected, I will enforce Z.” That’s boring to an electorate used to getting flashy new things. Additionally, the nominating contests prize political games rather than administrative experience. For example, a candidate who has an innate ability to use media to sell himself and trash the other candidates is not necessarily the candidate who would be good at enforcing law by administrative means.

This is not to say that U.S. presidents should have a M.B.A. as a prerequisite. George W. Bush had one from Harvard, and yet he essentially delegated the office’s administrative functions to the cabinet secretaries. Rather, the selection process itself could be designed differently such that people oriented to the chief-executive role more so than proposing new legislation (i.e., a legislative role) would tend to come out on top. Rather than being driven by a desire to put his or her ideological stamp on society through new legislation—this being the cause of the overreach—the ideal candidate would be oriented to protecting the viability of the system of public governance itself should it suffer from a systemic fault-line or extant threat—and otherwise be most interested in administering the government machinery—seeing that the existing laws and treaties are enforced. It would not be as if this task could be done by next Tuesday after which there would be plenty of time to join Congress in its legislative role. Indeed, for the separation-of-powers to work in the U.S. Government, a president’s legislative role should be limited to the negative one exercised by the presidential veto.

In short, just as the federal government itself has encroached on the constitutional prerogatives of the governments of the member-states, U.S. presidents have encroached on the Congress’s legislative role by going beyond their negative legislative role. Even within the bundle of presidential powers, spending time negotiating more trade deals before making sure that the existing treaties are fully enforced evinces an overreaching. The greed of power lies behind the over-reaching itself. Behind the greed is a malignant narcissism that seeks to reimage the world in the ego’s own image. As an alternative mentality, imagine a person who gets more excited about getting a system—in this case, the federal executive branch—to work properly, which includes not only working well, but also producing a lot of output. Applied to the executive branch, this would mean an orientation to (and satisfaction from) overseeing the government agencies and pushing them to enforce existing laws, including the treaties on trade. For such a mentality to “gets its due,” the selection process, the office itself, and even the values of the electorate would need to change. By the latter, I don’t mean that the electorate itself would have to value administrative functions; rather, enough Americans would have to agree to buffer the presidency from their own desire to be titillated and amused by “presidential contests” and snazzy presidential proposals. This is in part why the delegates at the Constitutional Convention invented the severely-flawed Electoral College; there was to be a check—the limited electors at the state level—on the passions of the citizenry in the selection of the U.S. president.  

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[1] Zach Carter, “Elizabeth Warren Details Obama’s Broken Trade Promises,” The Huffington Post, May 18, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.