Tit-for-Tat Trade War

Here's the problem with throwing down the gauntlet. Someone usually picks it up.

In the realm of international commerce, what ensues is called a trade war. When the United States fires the first protectionist salvo, rest assured that U.S. workers will be among the casualties.

Congress recently inserted just such a protectionist measure in a spending bill - killing a pilot project that allowed Mexican trucks to haul goods deeper into the United States.

Allowing Mexican trucks access to U.S. highways fulfills obligations under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the U.S., at the behest of U.S. truckers, has been stalling for years despite an international arbitration panel's finding that blocking the trucks violated the agreement. Mexico patiently has negotiated. The Bush administration created the pilot project after Congress imposed new safety requirements.

Mexican trucks participating in the project have been found to be generally as safe as U.S. trucks. And, this, of course, in the eyes of protectionist members of Congress, was cause to kill the project.

Mexico has retaliated by raising tariffs on 90 U.S. exports. That will mean U.S. goods grown with no place to go. Much more of that, and the ranks of the U.S.

unemployed will only swell.

President Barack Obama campaigned as if he wanted to reopen NAFTA to renegotiation, a campaign promise we'd be pleased if he broke. In any case, this unilateral action by Congress is to negotiation what a punch in the nose is to polite discourse.

Congress must reinstate the program. And if the Obama administration wants to negotiate anything, let it start with trying to make trade freer, not restricting it. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was meeting with lawmakers this week to try to reach a new deal to allow Mexican truckers broader access to U.S. roads.

Protectionist sentiments in times of domestic distress are easy to understand. But the problem with the current meltdown isn't about commerce being too fluid. It's about it not being fluid enough.

As a Journal Sentinel article last week by John Schmid explained, Wisconsin companies will be affected by these tariffs. They are on products ranging from soy sauce of the kind produced by Kikkoman in Walworth County to paper products produced elsewhere in the state.

One fear is that Mexico next will hike the tariff on corn, a big crop in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest. Arguing against this is how much Mexicans then will have to pay for what is a staple of their diet.

But that's the thing with war, trade and otherwise: Reason is often a

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