Trade Absent From State Of The Union

Feb. 3, 2005

The public policy agendas of four leading American business organizations -- the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) -- were widely reflected in the economic section of U.S. President Bush's Feb. 2 State of the Union Address to Congress. Among them: tort reform, a comprehensive energy policy, health-care reform and tax reform. Describing his plan for tax reform, the President used the term "pro-growth," the same words the NAM uses to characterize its entire set of public-policy proposals.

Conspicuous by its absence, however, was any mention of trade issues, major concerns of the NAM and the Business Roundtable. There was no mention of completing the current round of world trade negotiations, of seeking Congressional approval for the pending free-trade pact between the U.S. and several Central American countries, or of continuing to work on a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Significantly, there was no presidential call on Congress to renew Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which allows the White House to submit trade agreements to Capitol Hill for approval or disapproval but not for amendment. In the past, other nations have refused to bargain seriously with the United States without TPA, or its predecessor, Fast-Track Authority, being in place. Bush's trade negotiating authority will expire later this year, unless Congress renews it.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.