Good News

Andi Suruji of Kompas, today in his column, makes a good argument in supporting Asean-China FTA. Thumbs up.

Mangan ora Mangan.. yang Penting Merkantilis

Selama tiga hari berturut-turut Kompas memuat berita terpuruknya sektor pertanian Indonesia. Setuju, peningkatan produksi dan peningkatan pendapatan petani memang perlu diperjuangkan. Sederet masalah sisi produksi masih menghambat petani kita. Fluktuasi harga menjadi momok petani sementara akses bibit, modal, dan teknologi juga menjadi penghambat daya saing produk pertanian.

Kompas juga tepat mengagkat isu dis-integrasi ekonomi domestik ketika kondisi ekonomi eksternal sedang kacau. Tantangan geografis kita sebagai negara kepulauan menyebabkan segmentasi pasar dan terbatasnya economies of scale sehingga menjadi salah satu kendala pertumbuhan ekonomi. Sulit membayangkan perekonomian Indonesia bisa tumbuh seperti China karena kita punya hambatan infrastruktur. Oleh karena itu, meningkatkan integrasi pasar domestik sebaiknya menjadi salah satu acuan Kabinet ekonomi mendatang.

Tetapi konten sentimen anti-impor yang ditulis Kompas tiga hari berturut-turut membuat saya heran. Apakah pemahanam para penulis teresebut terhadap ilmu ekonomi makin melorot? Mudah-mudahan tidak. Tetapi artikel Kompas tersebut rasanya sudah "terjebak" dalam pemikiran merkantilisme abad ke 18 yang menganggap impor suatu kejahatan dan penumpukan devisa di dalam negeri sebagai barometer prestasi ekonomi.

Artikel tersebut menuliskan bahwa Indonesia telah "terjebak impor pangan" karena impornya yang kira-kira mencapai $5 milyar per tahun. Konten berita juga mengesankan perlunya "kebijakan berani" untuk swasembada produksi.

Saya tidak ingin masuk ke teknis ekonomi pertanian, tetapi saya ingin mempertanyakan beberapa hal yang muncul dalam artikel artikel tersebut.

Pertama mengenai impor dan devisa. Memang kita mengimpor sebagian pangan dan total nilai impor 2008 mencapai $5 milyar. Dari mulai gula, kedelai, dan komoditas pertanian lain yang kita juga produsen seperti ikan tertentu Indonesia pun mengiimpor.

Yang tidak ditulis Kompas adalah total ekspor non-migas Indonesia tahun 2008 mencapai $107 milyar. Ekspor produk perkebunan, pertanian dan perikanan Indonesia di tahun itu saja juga mencapai $29 milyar dan $21 milyar tergolong komoditas pangan (termasuk sawit, teh, kopi, perikanan). Lalu kalau kita impor pangan $5 milyar, apakah ini sesuatu yang mencemaskan bagi negara dengan penduduk lebih dari 250 juta jiwa dan termasuk dalam 20 negara dengan PDB terbesar?

Betul, impor menggunakan devisa dan ekspor mendatangkan devisa. Tetapi apakah perekonomian akan lebih baik dengan hanya mengumpulkan devisa? Penumpukan devisa hanya akan mengakibatkan Rupiah terapresiasi dan akhirnya malah menurunkan daya saing produk ekspor. Memang, salah satu cara menghindari masalah ini adalah dengan meniru China yang menukarkan sebagian penerimaan devisa ekspor kedalam aset asing (seperti US Treasury). Tetapi ini juga yang mengakibatkan ketidakseimbangan global yang pada akhirnya memicu krisis keuangan saat ini.

Kedua, apakah keberhasilan adalah jika apapun dapat disediakan sendiri? Apakah para penulis artikel tersebut belum pernah mendengar istilah intra-industry trade?

Contohnya begini. Mengapa negara produsen keju seperti Belanda masih mengimpor keju dari Perancis? Arab Saudi pun masih mengimpor kurma dari Tunisia atau negara Arab lainnya. Australia sebagai penghasil wool terbesar masih mengimpor kain wool atau jas ketimbang menjahit semuanya sendiri. Mengapa Eropa sebagai penghasil Airbus masih membeli pesawat Boeing, Embraer, atau produk IPTN? Jepang, sebagai produsen mobil dunia masih mengimpor Daihatsu Grand Max dari Indonesia. Lalu mengapa Amerika sebagai penghasil kedelai, gandum, dan produk teknologi tinggi masih mau impor kecap ABC dan Indomie dari kita?

Perdagangan membuka pintu bagi spesialisasi produksi sehingga produsen bisa mengeksploitasi skala ekonomi dan keunggulan komparatif nya. Perdaganan juga memungkinkan terjadinya spesialisasi produksi yang memberikan keuntungan terbesar. Ini kredo dasar teori ekonomi yang saya tidak temukan setelah membaca artikel-artikel tersebut.

Ketiga, apakah "kebijakan berani" itu berarti proteksi, subsidi, atau tata niaga? Kalau maksudnya proteksi, tidak ada gunanya untuk dibahas karena ilmunya sudah jelas. Kalau proteksi tersebut untuk mengurangi ketidakadilan karena subsidi pertanian negara-negara maju, jalankan saja mekanisme safeguard WTO secara transparan dan bukan lewat larangan ad-hoc. Kita tinggal perlu membuktikan kalau subsidi impor produk pertanian tertentu membawa akibat desktruktif oleh karena itu bea masuk perlu dinaikkan.

Kalau subsidi, saya setuju tinggal pertanyaanya mekanisme subsidi bagaimana desain subsidi yang tepat. Apakah meniru subsidi pertanian di Eropa atau Amerika yang terjebak oleh lobi politik? Apakah sebaiknya terarah (targeted) kepada petani atau dalam bentuk irigasi, bibit, dan extension services? Dengan perbaikan infrastruktur fisik, rasanya produk pertanian kita juga bisa kompetitif di dalam negeri. Miris rasanya kalau betul marjin keuntungan mengimpor jeruk China bisa lebih tinggi ketimbang mendatangkan jeruk Medan atau Pontianak.

Bagiamana dengan tata niaga? Kecuali beras yang memang punya bobot besar (22%) dalam konsumsi rumah tangga miskin, sulit menjustifikasi perlunya tata niaga untuk produk pertanian lain. Tata niaga dapat mendistorsi sinyal harga dan meningkatkan resiko petani terjebak dalam produksi komoditas tertentu saja. Katakanlah kita memaksakan adanya tata niaga kedelai. Bisa jadi harga kedelai naik secara artifisial sehingga petani tidak dibiarkan menanam produk dengan harga yang menarik seperti holtikultur (sayuran dan buah-buahan).

Keempat mengenai ketahanan pangan. I'm not an agriculture economist but why the concept of food security seems narrowly focused on the ability to produce rather on securing the ability to access food?

Obama adopts populism on trade deals

February 13, 2008 8:22 AM
Smart Move: Barack Obama Goes Populist In the Home Stretch
In my nationally syndicated newspaper column last week, I outlined some of the difficult terrain Barack Obama faces in trying to both court working-class voters and avoid the media's racist characterization of power-challenging African-American leaders as race-centric radicals. This is a very, very difficult thing to do, and I sympathize with Obama in moving carefully up to this point.

But with the next round of states overrepresenting for the constituencies Obama has done most poorly among - working-class whites and Latinos - he knows he has to try to thread the needle. He has to try to offer up more full-throated, class-based populism. And indeed, that's what he's doing.

In his victory speech last night, Obama hammered the North American Free Trade Agreement, previewing a major economic speech today. Here are some excerpts:

"It's a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear; workers whose right to organize and unionize has been under assault for the last eight years...So today, I'm laying out a comprehensive agenda to reclaim our dream and restore our prosperity. It's an agenda that focuses on three broad economic challenges that the next President must address - the current housing crisis; the cost crisis facing the middle-class and those struggling to join it; and the need to create millions of good jobs right here in America- jobs that can't be outsourced and won't disappear.
For our economy, our safety, and our workers, we have to rebuild America. I'm proposing a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years. This investment will multiply into almost half a trillion dollars of additional infrastructure spending and generate nearly two million new jobs - many of them in the construction industry that's been hard hit by this housing crisis. The repairs will be determined not by politics, but by what will maximize our safety and homeland security; what will keep our environment clean and our economy strong. And we'll fund this bank by ending this war in Iraq. It's time to stop spending billions of dollars a week trying to put Iraq back together and start spending the money on putting America back together instead...

It's also time to look to the future and figure out how to make trade work for American workers. I won't stand here and tell you that we can - or should - stop free trade. We can't stop every job from going overseas. But I also won't stand here and accept an America where we do nothing to help American workers who have lost jobs and opportunities because of these trade agreements. And that's a position of mine that doesn't change based on who I'm talking to or the election I'm running in.

You know, in the years after her husband signed NAFTA, Senator Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring. Now that she's running for President, she says we need a time-out on trade. No one knows when this time-out will end. Maybe after the election.

I don't know about a time-out, but I do know this - when I am President, I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for our environment and protections for American workers. And I'll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I've been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate - we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America."

This is really terrific stuff, and I say that as someone who has been critical of Obama in the past for his timidity on issues like trade - issues that make the Establishment particularly uncomfortable.

Politically, the benefits to Obama of voicing a populist message on trade are obvious. Recent polls in the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine show that Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to America's current lobbyist-written trade policy. While this trade policy may be popular on K Street, it ain't popular on Main Street. And as it relates to Obama's message of reconfiguring the political map and attracting Republican voters, a populist line on trade is perhaps the single most powerful tool to do just that. A post-2006 election poll for the Democracy Corps and Campaign for America's Future showed that among Republican voters who considered voting Democratic that year, the GOP's support for unfair trade deals was the top reason they considered switching. While Clinton insultingly says many "red states" Obama won are unimportant because they supposedly can't be won by a Democrat on election day, these numbers suggest a populist message on trade against a "free" trader like John McCain (R) could profoundly change the map.

Substantively, Obama certainly hasn't been as aggressive as many would like on trade, and my reservations about him on this issue will persist. However, this is undoubtedly an encouraging step and it's fair to say he understands the real-world impact of this issue. This is a person who represents Illinois and who talks about working in the shadows of shuttered steel mills. With the departure of John Edwards, Obama is a candidate whose top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, is the only remaining top presidential economic guru who acknowledges that our current trade deals are horrifying - rather than wonderful. And though we've seen people like Bill Clinton promise as candidates to get tough on trade and then as president do exactly the opposite, this is a different candidate and a different era - with a much more angry public.

True, Obama's a bit late to this - but as someone concerned more with movement building than with an individual candidate, I say better late than never. And, after all, the primary process is a time that can truly shape candidates in a genuine way. As just one example, Howard Dean was the moderate, near-DLC governor of Vermont, and had a very authentic and profound conversion into a more proud progressive populist during his 2004 presidential run. We should embrace that kind of transformation - and hold out the possibility that perhaps a similar dynamic is playing out with Obama on an issue like trade.

Sure, there's some opportunism here as well. Obama is likely trying to walk down the path John Edwards first courageously blazed in this race. He is looking out at the next cluster of primary states and knows that these are the ones that have been hit hard by NAFTA and other rigged trade deals. He looks at Ohio and sees Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) - a man who was elected in 2006 based largely on his opposition to our current trade policy. He also sees the New York Times report that former President Bill Clinton is going to be campaigning in Ohio - and knows that the best way to make that boomerang against his opponent is to remind Ohio voters that it was Bill and Hillary Clinton who jammed NAFTA down the Buckeye State's throat.

But opportunism isn't bad. If Obama sees his opportunity in voicing a progressive, populist message on trade, then that's a good thing. That means that we have a leading presidential candidate who sees being a populist and a progressive as a major opportunity. For the progressive movement, that's what success looks like.

Obama is sure to be berated by national pundits for going populist - it's precisely the kind of message that drives well-heeled Establishment propagandists across the partisan spectrum crazy. From Joe Klein to David Broder to David Brooks, questioning the economic elite is seen as the ultimate blasphemy. As Sherrod Brown told the Nation this week, when he ran in 2006, "I got one newspaper endorsement in the state of the big nine papers." Most opposed him because he dared to challenge the economic orthodoxy that says we must have trade deals that encourage corporations to eliminate jobs, destroy the environment and exploit workers, while legislating protectionism for patents, intellectual property, copyrights and other corporate profit shields.

But Brown didn't cater to elite opinion - he was talking directly to voters. If Obama can withstand the inevitable onslaught of scorn from the Punditburo, his new populism may deliver him the presidency.

Posted by David Sirota

Secret trade deal delayed

From David Sirota's blog


“Democratic leaders in Congress put off a vote on trade agreements with Peru and Panama until those countries revamp their laws to comply with new labor and environment standards in the accords. The demand is a blow to the Bush administration, which pressed the Democratic majority in Congress to have the Peru agreement approved next month…Two other agreements, with South Korea and Colombia, face further hurdles before Congress will consider them, the Democrats said. Even though Pelosi and Rangel worked out an agreement with the administration last month to revamp the four pending free-trade agreements, they aren’t assured passage in Congress. Many Democrats say they won’t support those or any other agreements reached by the Bush administration. ‘We need to play defense against all these agreements,’ Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said yesterday.”

In the same story, though, we see exactly why we have to keep the pressure on - namely because they still intend to ultimately try to ram the deal through, even though it delegates all power to enforce the much-touted new labor and environmental provisions to the Bush White House. This delay represents fear - a fear by the handful of Democrats who agreed to this deal, by the Bush White House and by corporate lobbyists that if they try to pass this deal into law right now, it will be defeated. That we’ve created that fear is an incredible step forward - but you can bet the forces pushing this deal will be spending the next few months doing whatever they can to steamroll the opposition:

“Representative Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will lead a delegation oflawmakers to those countries in August to help them work through those changes, Democrats said in a statement. ‘We are hopeful that this trip will lead to the swift passage this fall in Peru and Panama of the necessary legislation to change laws and implement fully the respective agreements,'’ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rangel and other Democratic leaders said in a joint statement today.”

Democrats sell out labor on trade deal?

things look bad.
This press release just came out from the office of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), one of the leading fair traders in Congress and the author of the book “The Myths of Free Trade”:
“Yesterday’s announcement by Chairman Rangel, Chairman Levin, Chairman Baucus and Ambassador Schwab is the result of millions of voters speaking out in November against a fundamentally-flawed trade policy. It is the result of the largest ever bipartisan coalition formed against the NAFTA-model trade pact. It is the result of tireless efforts by fair trade advocates in the U.S. and across the globe fighting every day for a new direction in trade. The proposed changes recognize the inherent flaws in the current approach to trade and signal some willingness to address long- held concerns over labor and environmental standards. However, I have significant concerns about the enforceability of the changes. Given the administration’s failure to act against on known violations in Jordan and China, among other nations, those concerns are well founded. Time will tell whether yesterday is the beginning of efforts toward a better trade model or just a brief tactical retreat on the part of the administration. I look forward to reviewing the changes in these agreements in their entirety, and working with my colleagues on a trade policy that is acceptable to the millions of voters who sent us to Congress.”
Still no word on the full details of the trade deal.

For more see
http://davidsirota.com/
I don't know about you, but I did not help elect Democrats to advance Bush policies on trade.