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In a recent Federal Register notice, the Obama administration seeks public input on how exactly the president’s announced National Export Initiative (NEI)—launched nearly four months ago—is supposed to work. Recall that President Obama announced the NEI in March, intending to double U.S. exports by 2015. The June 30 notice requests information on how the federal government currently impedes and can conversely better assist exporters in selling their products and services abroad.

The notice makes apparent that the NEI still lacks a key element. Simply relying on bigger federal government programs is not going to increase exports. The NEI is only going to be remotely possible if the Obama administration resumes U.S. leadership on trade issues and improves market access for U.S. business through trade negotiations. Pursuing a trade agenda dominated by enforcement and federal government trade advocacy programs is an easy way for the administration to appear to pay lip service to trade. What a shame that it is easier to pander to core anti-trade constituencies than to pursue all avenues for economic growth as Americans continue to suffer through these tough economic times. This seemingly half-hearted attempt at a national export strategy is yet another example of how the Obama administration is more concerned about the appearance of action rather than actual good policy.

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National Security Advisor General Jim Jones gave some updates this week on where the Obama administration is going with its comprehensive export-control reform initiative. General Jones’ remarks before the Senate Aerospace Caucus were a follow-up to an April speech by Defense Secretary Gates, who initially laid out the administration’s vision for the reforms. Secretary Gates had announced that the administration intended to consolidate in three phases over one year the U.S. Government’s export control functions into a single control list, licensing agency, enforcement agency, and IT system. General Jones’ comments shed further light on how some of the details of the reform plan have moved forward. Here are some highlights and preliminary observations:

Congress: The administration has decided that only Phase III requires Congressional action. Has the administration sufficiently consulted with Congress on this decision? Will this affect Phase III’s political viability?

Export Control Functions: The Treasury Department’s sanctions programs administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) now appear to be included. Adding OFAC is an important step in ensuring that the reforms are comprehensive. How about the nuclear licensing regime?

Control Lists: Apparently, Phase I has already been completed and, among other things, the administration has formulated “independent objective criteria” for cascading tiers of control and a “bright line process” for determining whether products, technologies, etc., belong on the Commerce or Munitions Lists. Having clear definitions and jurisdictional criteria for establishing what is controlled and how is vital to a well-functioning export control system. General Jones, however, did not elaborate on what these criteria and processes are and whether they will ever be made public.

IT System and Licensing: A single licensing application for all export licensing will be issued. Existing portals for export licensing will be consolidated into the Defense Department’s USXPORTS system. This is a helpful step for exporters, depending on how well the new electronic system works. While Commerce and State have electronic licensing systems, OFAC still uses paper and has no standard license form.

Enforcement: An Enforcement Fusion Center is being created to consolidate the enforcement agencies’ and intelligence community functions, eventually combining Commerce Export Enforcement Office and DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Also planned are the harmonization of maximum export-control criminal penalties, added civil penalties, and a study commissioned with the U.S. Sentencing Commission to add mandatory minimum criminal sentences for export control violations.

Consolidation among enforcement agencies is a good idea, provided there is sufficient information sharing and coordination—not guaranteed simply by combining government personnel. The U.S. Government should be tough on violators, but the types of violations that would yield mandatory minimum sentences will be key to assessing whether or not this is good policy or simply political posturing.

Single Agency: A new independent agency will be created, not one housed in an existing cabinet department, to be headed by a board of directors composed of the current export-control agencies’ cabinet heads. This is a long-awaited announcement, but leaves many unanswered questions. Now that we know there might be an independent agency, how is an agency with a board of several cabinet officials supposed to work? How will decision-making be structured? Will all of the existing export control agency personnel be housed under the same roof?

Cross-posted from the Center for Defense Studies.

Another interesting piece of the president’s comments on trade in his State of the Union address included a plug for the ongoing export control reform efforts underway since August. First off, just his mentioning of this is a big deal. There has been much discussion of the high-level support afforded the export control reform efforts in the administration, a la Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others. For the president to mention these efforts in his speech shows perhaps exactly how high that support goes. I hope the president’s apparent enthusiasm will translate into large-scale policy changes which the export control system direly needs instead of quick-fix, cosmetic reforms that do not address the system’s fundamental flaws.

On September 11, 2009, at the behest of Big Labor, President Obama decided to impose a safeguard against the import of Chinese tires. We might recall that the president decided that a three-year safeguard, commencing with a 35 percent tariff in the first year and then dropping by 5 percent in the subsequent two years, would give the U.S. tire industry the chance to get back on its feet. While this was pie in the sky, President Obama’s decision was not the last word. China has now initiated litigation against the United States at the World Trade Organization (WTO), challenging the tire safeguard as inconsistent with U.S. obligations at the WTO. We will in all likelihood lose this case after what will assuredly be a long, drawn-out WTO proceeding. At that point (if not before), President Obama will have to decide whether to remove the measure and face the wrath of his union constituencies, or to have the United States suffer WTO-sanctioned retaliation against related or unrelated U.S. imports into China and to play hardball with Beijing. His decision is not to be envied.

It seems that President Obama’s feet are finally being held to the fire on trade. Not by U.S. exporters or those in the United States who believe free trade may be an effective recipe for growth, but by Asian and other world leaders who believe that the president has simply let them down. With the campaign sloganeering, “Buy America” provision in the stimulus package, tariffs on Chinese tires, inordinate influence of Big Labor (just to name a few), it’s been well noticed that President Obama has plainly abdicated leadership on a cornerstone of post-WWII foreign policy during the first quarter of his administration. Did President Obama actually believe he could omit trade from his constructive engagement strategy, especially in Asia where trade is so important, and no one would notice?

However, we would be remiss if we did not credit President Obama for taking up a Bush administration initiative to pursue a regional free trade agreement (FTA) with Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries—Singapore, Brunei, New Zealand, and Chile. While it is the first FTA that the president has pursued, we would also be remiss to take this too seriously. In his announcement President Obama said that the TPP would ensure “the high standards worthy of a 21st-century trade agreement.” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk likewise indicated that the agreement would be done “in close consultation with the United States Congress and with stakeholders at home.”

The problem is that those statements actually mean: “We’ll pack our demands with unworkable labor and environment standards to ensure ‘fair trade.’ We’ll then force you to agree to them, but then our Democratic colleagues on the Hill and anti-trade constituencies, such as Big Labor, won’t allow our agreement to go anywhere.” Then one realizes that the announcement was likely nothing more than mere rhetoric and instead provides President Obama cover to grandstand on trade. The president can purport to support an agreement for which progress will be slow and any political ramifications distantly prospective—and that is if the negotiations even go anywhere.

And that is if real negotiations begin. Deputy National Security Advisor Mark Froman’s press briefing shortly after the president’s speech leaves amorphous whether the president is in fact actually committed to the TPP.

If the president were really serious about trade, he would have already forged support among his Democratic colleagues in Congress to pass FTAs already negotiated—such as the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement KORUS—especially before going to Asia. This just may be a topic of conversation during the president’s imminent trip to Seoul.

Interesting news today out of India on the climate change policy front. The Indian government has been actively staking out its positions and forging alliances in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate change conference in December. Today in climate change meetings co-hosted by the Indian government and the United Nations in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated Indian policy that developed countries would need to largely shoulder green house gas emission cuts in any international deal (based on a per capita formula) and that developing countries, while needing to examine their carbon footprints, should not sacrifice their development aims.

This meeting comes on the heels of other meetings held yesterday between Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and the vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Xie Zhenhua, during which the countries signed a memorandum of understanding establishing an annual bilateral dialogue on climate issues, and pledged a united front vis-a-vis developed countries on climate change.

The coalition-building activities on the part of the Indian government just might find the Obama administration wrong-footed come December. (We might recall the effectiveness of coalition building by India at the Doha Round World Trade Organization talks.) The Obama administration appears to be unsure where it’s going on climate change and to have its hands tied—as there is unlikely to be any definitive congressional action by December.

How will the Obama administration deal with the confluence of a potential cohesive block of Indian-led developing countries and a lack of U.S. domestic consensus on climate change, especially given the importance that the president has placed on this issue?