Whither North America Redux....

A sense of doom is beginning to take hold about the future of the NAFTA's "renegotiation," "modernization" or "destruction" (pick your favorite). Last week, at the end of Round 4 of NAFTA 2.0 talks, the three governments announced the 5th round would be postponed for a month (late November) to allow for some stock-taking by all parties.

Fake smiles, failed Round

It's hard to read into this delay much that is positive, if for no other reason than that it will probably push completion of any agreement into the spring of 2018 and closer to presidential elections in Mexico. The proximate reason for "stock-taking" are the positions being taken by the Trump Administration on a range of issues (dispute settlement, procurement, supply management, agriculture, rules of origin, etc) unpalatable to Canada and Mexico-- see my previous pieces on these things as the talks have moved along (here, here and here).

In my search for a silver lining in all of this, I have tried to tell myself that all negotiations look doomed right before a deal is struck. In truth, I predict that before the end of the year Trump will make formal what I believe he's wanted all along; scrap the NAFTA.

One of the most ardent proponents of North American integration, American University's Robert Pastor, died in early 2014. To the end, he vigorously pursued efforts to more firmly connect

Over the last few months, I've thought about what he'd say about what's going on. One of my very first posts to this blog was about North America and was connected to Pastor's passing. I thought I'd re-post it since it's as relevant today as ever.

Originally posted, January 21, 2014

Is North America Over?

New Year’s Day 2014 marked the 20^th anniversary of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). About a week later, January 8, Robert Pastor, one of the NAFTA’s fiercest defenders, and one of academia’s most tireless advocates of deeper North American integration, died after a 3 ½ year battle with cancer. To the citizen on the street, Robert Pastor is hardly a household name. Yet, among those in academia or public policy for whom North America was a focus, Robert Pastor’s work could not be ignored. Indeed, for much of the past three decades we have all—academics, politicians, and the general public-- implicitly been debating the merits of his policy prescriptions.

Pastor’s death also comes at a time of great uncertainty about the future of North American integration. Government priorities in all three countries have shifted elsewhere. Academic centers focused on North America have been disappearing. There’s little private sector consensus on the merits of further integration. Academic centers focused on North America are in rapid decline. And security has become entrenched as the overarching framework for governing the North American economic space. The last phase-ins of the NAFTA came into force some five years ago and the agreement has largely done what it set out to do. Many of the undergraduates I see every fall know little about the NAFTA. In short, the NAFTA is old news.

Robert Pastor’s final book was entitled The North American Idea (2011) but what’s actually left of that idea?

For proponents of North American integration, the early 1990s were heady times. The Cold War was over. Democracy and liberal capitalism had emerged as the victorious, dominant mode of global governance anchored by the United States as the pre-eminent example of both. Yet, for proponents of this view, euphoria gave way to despair as the 1990s wore on as challenges to liberal capitalism and integrated markets emerged. The NAFTA’s implementation in January 1994 was marred by the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico. The newly created World Trade Organization was infamously rocked by violence at its 1999 ministerial meeting in Seattle (Battle in Seattle). And the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, hatched with some fanfare in 1994, was effectively dead by 2002.

Efforts to build upon what the NAFTA had begun mostly fell on deaf ears after 1994. The Clinton Administration, which spent so much of its political capital on getting the NAFTA through the U.S. Congress, seldom mentioned it again during the two terms of his administration. The NAFTA had already become synonymous with all that was wrong with the rapidly expanding global trading regime, Pastor more recently complaining that it became a “piñata for pandering pundits and politicians.” Indeed, critics from both ends of the political spectrum came to see what they wanted in the NAFTA. For some, the Agreement was too shallow and didn’t do enough institutionally to level North America’s asymmetries. For others, the NAFTA dealt with too few issues and left a lengthy list of festering problems off the table. For others still, the NAFTA represented a kind of Trojan Horse, poised to destroy sovereignty, force the export of bulk fresh water, facilitate the construction of twelve lane super-highways, destroy the environment, or unleash waves of low-cost, job-killing labor.

Prior to the September 11 attacks on the United States, virtually every global meeting of economic leaders was guaranteed to illicit protests numbering in the tens of thousands, epitomized by the 1999 Battle in Seattle, anti-FTAA protests in Quebec City in 2001, and tragically capped by the death of a protester at the hands of police at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy in July 2001. It had all become a poisonous mix that North America’s political and private sector leadership wanted no part of.

As many others retreated from the debate, Robert Pastor jumped in with two feet, publishing Toward a North American Community in August 2001. There he argued that the central failing of North American integration was that the NAFTA had done too little to institutionalize and strengthen trilateral cooperation. He contrast the absence of institution building in North America with the sclerotic, over-institutionalization of the European Union and argued for a unique approach to North America that landed somewhere in the middle, reflective of the continent’s unique history. Nevertheless, his argument instantly made him the target of intellectual and political foes, among them, CNN’s Lou Dobbs, whose anti-trade, anti-immigration rhetoric was openly xenophobic. Whereas members of the Clinton and Bush administrations refused to challenge Dobbs and others, Pastor took them on, transforming himself into a political piñata as well.

I have heard Robert Pastor referred to as North America’s Jean Monnet; a reference to one of European integration’s greatest intellectual and political champions. The Monnet Plan was designed to jumpstart the integration of Europe through the integration of French and German coal and steel production. Monnet himself was later appointed president of the European Coal and Steel Community’s governing body. Monnet lived to see even more economic integration among western European economies, but died in 1979, well before Europe’s post-Cold War expansion and the creation of the Euro. The European project remains a work in progress, and there were certainly days on which Monnet wondered if his vision of an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Europe would ever come to pass.

Comparing Pastor to Monnet might be taking matters too far, particularly since many of his ideas (customs unions, common currency) are controversial.  Yet, the comparison is apt in that, like Monnet, Pastor pushed his vision for North America everywhere he went; within academia, the halls of power, the private sector, and the media.

Yet, the timing of Pastor’s Toward a North American Community could not have been worse. The 9/11 terrorist attacks instantly put the economic integration debate on hold, quickly replacing it with security—in many minds, the antithesis of economic openness.

In recent years, Pastor became an outspoken critic of the impact post-9/11 security measures were having on the economic benefits of North American integration. He was dismayed at the absence of political courage by the three governments to pursue a larger vision of an integrated, and secure, North American economic space. In 2005, the three governments launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership aimed at balancing the benefits of economics with the new imperatives of security.

It was the first serious trilateral cooperative effort since the NAFTA. Yet its main achievements were to upset nearly every stakeholder group imaginable, each of the national legislatures, and provide fodder to conspiracy theorists on the political left and right. The SPP generated a long list of issues the three countries could work on, but was never guided by an overarching vision of what North America could become, and quietly went away in 2009, further solidifying border security as the overarching paradigm through which our leaders see the continent. In 1994, scholars spoke of the implications of a borderless North America with passport free travel and integrated labor markets. In 2014, North America’s borders are more prominent than ever, acting as both commercial choke-point and security dragnet.

Much as Winston Churchill warned of an “iron curtain” descending across Europe at the onset of the Cold War, Pastor was aghast at the descent of a “security curtain” over North America and its effect on trilateral cooperation. He was especially critical of the leadership in Ottawa as it sought to sideline Mexico City and deal with Washington bilaterally. Ottawa believed it could cash in on Canada’s “special relationship” win security concessions from Washington that would prevent the “Mexicanization” of the Canada-U.S. border; the U.S.-Mexico and Canada-U.S. borders are actually more similar now than they are different. In fact, Pastor argued that Ottawa’s approach only exacerbated the asymmetries of power among the three countries that Canada had spent much of the last two decades trying to minimize through agreements like the NAFTA. Further, he argued, the leadership in Mexico City was far more open than Ottawa to a collective, perimeter approach with Washington to the mix of economics and security. More troubling still, Ottawa’s approach represented a puzzling misread of the importance of Latin America, and Mexico in particular, in U.S. policy-making that has netted Canada few, if any, benefits.

In his last book, The North American Idea (2011), Pastor argues that the historical experiences of Canada, the United States, and Mexico have far more similarities and points of intersection than is often assumed. In addition, public opinion surveys in all three countries suggest the populations of all three are more open to the idea of a more unified North America than any of the three governments. However, the idea of a unified North America seems more elusive than ever. Security overwhelmingly dominates our approach to border policy, arguably undermining many of the economic benefits of economic integration. Apart from border security issues, North America has faded in the policy priorities of all three national capitals. And the academic and policy research focus on North America is in rapid retreat throughout the continent.

The European project has been over 60 years in the making and remains a work in progress. Jean Monnet did not live to see the advent of passport free travel or a common currency in Europe, and must have despaired over the pace at which is vision was being implemented. Yet, the idea of a more unified Europe remained.

Robert Pastor’s specific prescriptions for North America were not always popular, even among those who basically agreed with him. Yet, he, like Monnet, spent much of his life trying to keep the “idea” of North America alive in whatever form it eventually takes. North America is not Europe, nor will it ever be. However, the “idea” of a more trilaterally oriented North American economic, security, and (I’d argue) ecological space is as important as it’s ever been to the people who live in it. Our policy leadership would be wise to keep this “idea” in mind.

Alternate Nostril Breathing.....

Hillary Clinton has slowly been normalizing her return to public life following 2016's stunning presidential election outcome. Her new book, aptly titled "What Happened," includes many depressing details about the tumult of 2016 and her personal struggles in the year since. In a recent interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper about the book, she also revealed that one of the techniques she had tried as a means centering and calming herself was the practice of alternate nostril breathing.

I have, of course, expressed a growing level of angst about the Trump Administration as its first year in office comes to a close. It seems a little goofy, but since it seemed to work for Mrs. Clinton, I thought I'd give it a go.

It wasn't helpful.

I probably wasn't doing it right; sort of like my experience with yoga a few years back. Just not my cup of tea.

Of late, I have sought more and more comfort from a different source; the Federalist Papers. I've written here before about my admiration for what Madison and Hamilton wrote in New York newspapers more than 220 years ago in the midst of the ratification debate. However, those musings were more of an attempt to understand the political paralysis that frustrates so many observers of American politics. Whether it's foreigners or Americans themselves, the perpetual inability to get things accomplished is most often depicted as a sign of impending doom for the entire system. Yet, as I repeated over and over again, Madison (especially) and Hamilton largely designed it that way.

The whole point of America's infamous "checks and balances" at the federal level, and replicated inside each of the 50 states, is to thwart the concentration of power, to pit "ambition against ambition," and short-circuit the "mischiefs of faction" that Madison worried could undermine everything. It is a system that is incredibly open, with multiple points of entry into different branches and levels of government. It's a system that rewards organization, virtually ensures countervailing forces will organize against you, and necessitates messy compromise. That might seem an odd thing to say in an era of hyper-partisanship and the virtual absence of anything that looks like compromise. Yet, whereas just a few years ago the failure to compromise, the inability to make progress on many issues, and the paralysis in policy-making were-- for some-- signs of the apocalypse, many of those same people probably see more virtue in it all than ever.

The fact is, wherever I look in the Trump Administration these days, I see the Federalist No. 10 and No. 51 in action. In his first year in office, President Trump has crashed spectacularly into the standard problems all presidents encounter. The main difference for Trump is that he's compounding them with a potent combination of navel-gazing narcissism and staggering incompetence.

For normal presidents, the fundamental dilemma facing them is that they have too little authority to satisfy public expectations of their performance. If you read Madison's thinking about this in the Federalist, and quickly peruse Article II of the U.S. Constitution, you'll quickly realize how true this is. On its face, Article II powers are pretty minimal. Indeed, there's a strong argument to be made that Madison and company thought of the U.S. president in largely ceremonial terms. "Commander in Chief" is pretty important, but Congress is in charge of raising and financing the troops under the President's control? There are some foreign affairs duties assigned to the President, but they all come with important limitations; ambassadorial appointments and treaty-making functions all require Senate approval.

I am not arguing that American presidents are weak figures. Indeed, throughout the course of American history, presidents have had a very liberal reading of the meaning of Article II's "Executive power" to do all kinds of things and effectively expand presidential authority and influence. Trump can clearly do a lot of harm; he's got his finger on the nuclear button, is sabre rattling with North Korea, and just today made moves to undo the nuclear deal with Iran.

For a variety of practical reasons, U.S. presidents have assumed responsibility for broad swaths of American foreign policy, including many duties ostensibly reserved for Congress under Article I, Section 8's "enumerated powers." Yet, presidents have to be cautious with the exercise of power. Power isn't static nor is it without limits, particularly within a U.S. system which gives comparatively little nominal or statutory power to the president, and sets up all sorts of other actors looking to undermine presidential power. The kind of power presidents need to get things done must be carefully cultivated and wielded judiciously or risk having it eviscerated away by other parts of Madison's original design.

President Trump swept into office after one of the craziest, most surprising campaigns in American history. In his first couple of weeks in office, President Trump signed all kinds of Executive Orders designed to get the ball rolling on parts of his agenda. Many of them reversed Executive Orders put in place by the Obama Administration. Trump has withdrawn from the Trans Pacific Partnership, threatened to scrap the NAFTA, and hectored the South Koreans into revisiting the U.S.-Korean Free Trade Agreement. He has initiated a travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, threatened not to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, and threatened to cut the budgets of key executive branch agencies-- State, EPA, Interior-- he doesn't like. All serious and deeply troubling.

Feelin' the Love Last Spring....

Yet, to get anything big done, Trump needs some friends on Capitol Hill; he needs legislation. Unlike parliamentary systems, the only two elected officials in cabinet are the President and Vice-President, neither of which sits in the legislature. In the United States, party discipline is a faint shadow of what it is in parliamentary systems, and the President, while the most prominent member of their political party has virtually no authority over those within their party elected to Congress.

For a time, Republicans on Capitol Hill probably felt they owed part of their own electoral victories to the phenomenon that Trump became on the campaign trail. Yet, many of those same members have always had reservations about Trump, a number probably want Trump's job in 2020.

Getting Congress to go along with White House policy priorities is a bit like herding 535 kittens (100 in the Senate, 435 in the House); it requires a near-constant persuasive offensive on the part of White House staff, and the President himself. Where presidential priorities are concerned, the most effective White House's behave more like a "legislators in chief," frequently drafting legislation that reflects those priorities, and then seeking sponsors on Capitol Hill to shepherding them through committees, amendment, and final votes. All the while, Presidents and their staffs are monitoring the proceedings, paying recalcitrant Members visits, making promises in exchange for their support, or sometimes exerting a little not-so-friendly pressure.

President Obama was terrible at this; probably one of the biggest reasons ObamaCare is where it is today. But Trump is even worse at all of this. His main tactic seems to be using Twitter to critique legislative initiatives on healthcare or taxes he hasn't bothered to read. Moreover, if he wants anything done about immigration, infrastructure, or his ridiculous border wall, he's going to need support from some of the same people he's been excoriating.

For a stark contrast with both of these leaders, just listen to parts of the Lyndon Johnson Tapes. Therein, you will hear a master-manipulator calling recalcitrant Members of Congress about their lack of support for his priorities. President Johnson was alternatively persuasive, abrasive, and crude with is former Hill colleagues, but he was brilliant in the way he wielded carrots and sticks to get his way.

As Trump racks up failures, many of which are own-goals, his influence and "power" over his agenda are beginning to wane. In short, President Trump has failed to cultivate and preserve the limited power he had in his sails on Election Day in 2016. Presidents have always been uniquely positioned to appeal to the entire country, rally support, and pursue their agendas. Who else has a 747 to fly around in? Who else can request national television time to pitch their ideas to voters? Who else in the country can serve as "consoler-in-chief" in times of national crisis (hurricanes, mass shootings, etc)? What about the role of an American president as "leader of the free world?"

None of this happens or resides fully within the control of U.S. presidents unless it's actively maintained, cultivated, and wisely exercised. Trump is quickly squandering what little of this power he had. Waiting in the wings are a long list of actors in the American political system eager to marginalize the White House, undercut its power, and move a different agenda forward while they wait for the next president to be elected in 2020.

Few people imagined someone like Trump ever moving into the White House. But Madison and Hamilton did.

Whether Trump serves just four years or eight (a possibility I do not discount), I'll be leaving the alternate nostril breathing to Mrs. Clinton. At the moment I've got no plans to build a survival bunker in the backyard and hide for the next few years. Instead, my solace, my zen in the middle of all this chaos, will continue to come from the Federalist Papers.