Slashing imports would address those and a host of other environmental and human-rights problems created by overproduction and overconsumption. But with an increasingly fragile economy that depends so heavily on consumer spending, politicians and economists continue to call for more trade, not less.
That’s certainly the case on the 2008 campaign trail. The presidential candidates express concern over imports only when urging “independence from foreign oil.” Republican John McCain, a committed free-trader, saluted June’s strong trade report, saying that it "provided an important reminder of the role that exports play in our economy."
Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s campaign website says, “Obama believes that trade with foreign nations should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs.” In practice, he appears to vacillate between advocating mild trade regulations (for which critics repeatedly brand him as a “protectionist”) and flirting with “strong dollar” policies that would bring in even higher volumes of imports.
Some of the flow through our ports seems almost circular – trade for the sake of trade. In some of the categories that the US Census Bureau uses to tally trade, such as “pleasure boats and motors”, “toiletries and cosmetics”, and “medicinal equipment”, the dollar values of goods coming in and going out are strikingly similar.
All that activity, both inbound and outbound, generates profits along with the pollution. As a consequence, no one on either side of the battle over pollution control around ports, roads, and railways seems to be urging a rollback of imports.
John Husing, in his economic analysis of goods traffic in California, urged aggressive expansion of the industry as the only viable job-creation strategy. He explains, “In this region, 44 percent of the population has a high school education or less. People need blue-collar jobs without barriers to entry. Manufacturing is in decline. Construction’s in the toilet. But logistics and distribution is growing fast. With tracking technology, it’s an information-intensive sector and pays at least as well as manufacturing, better than construction.”
Says Husing, “For a while there I was Public Enemy Number One in the environmental movement’s eyes. They are concerned about people’s health. I argued that poverty is a public-health issue, and they didn’t like that. But they seem to be coming around.”
On the issue of ports and distribution centers, environmentalists are focusing on pollution control, while assuming that consumption of imported goods will continue to grow. Asked if the root of the problem is simply that we’re importing too much stuff, NRDC’s Jessica Lass changed the subject back to efficiency: “We don’t want to stand in the way of progress. We need a way to expand our ports in an environmentally sustainable manner and create more jobs.”
In Kansas, too, the debate is over how to deal with the surge of imported goods, not how to curtail it. Claud Hobby says that the Burlington Northern facility should be built in an area 14 miles farther south of Gardner, where there’s plenty of open land: “We’ve had this thing thrown into our backyard. Instead, they should put it where growth can move toward it. Then any people or companies who don’t mind being near this thing can buy land and move in around it.”
A deep recession or depression could disrupt the “purchase-driven life” that fuels the American economy. Until then, it appears, the quest for more efficient methods of importing ever-greater tonnages will continue.
A clean-running economy that can thrive on less production and less importation of consumer goods would look very different from today’s economy. It may be out there somewhere in the future, but it’s hard to see through the clouds of diesel exhaust.
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