Free trade important to present and future

Listening to some of the heated rhetoric about free trade in this election year, I’m reminded of the many benefits trade brings to both this state and the greater Houston area, including the community in which I live, The Woodlands.

In some of what is said, you’d think free trade is this country’s No. 1 Enemy. The facts show that’s just not so. More than 95 percent of the world’s population and 80 percent of its purchasing power lies outside of the United States. The world’s economy long ago became interconnected, and that’s simply not going to change.

That interconnection is vividly clear in The Woodlands, where so many of the companies attracted to our community operate globally, and our ability to attract and support these companies is vital to our local economy.

Our state’s economic growth and jobs increasingly depend on expanding U.S. trade and investment opportunities in the global marketplace. For instance:

• International trade, including exports and imports, supports 3.1 million Texas jobs — nearly one in five jobs in our state — and traderelated jobs grew 1.5 times faster than total employment from 2004 to 2014.

• Exports in the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land area totaled $119 billion in 2014, trailed by Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $28.7 billion and San Antonio-New Braunfels at $25.8 billion.

• Just in The Woodlands alone, foreign companies account for more than 1200 direct jobs.

• Customers in 225 countries and territories buy Texas-made goods and services, including billions of dollars in annual exports to top markets such as Mexico, Canada and Brazil, and

• Exports of Texas goods have grown more than 60 percent faster than the state’s GDP since 2004. Foreign-owned companies invest and build facilities, and now employ more than 500,000 workers in Texas.

So what gives rise to the anti-free trade rhetoric? There sometimes seems be an attitude that free trade is one-sided, that if the other country wins we lose — an aversion to competition. Since when did Americans become incapable of competing? Competition brings out the best in all of us. We prosper and they prosper.

In neither the Great Depression nor the Great Recession was there a global winner-loser situation. We all suffered together and, as recovery slowly occurred, we all prospered together.

President Obama’s recent trip to Asia and the G-7 Summit in Japan reminded me of how interconnected the world has become. The president noted “the need for us to continue to boost global growth and to move ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The alliance between the United States and Japan is a critical foundation for the security of both of our countries.”

A meeting in The Woodlands earlier this year, in which Japan’s consul general outlined the importance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to the Texas economy, emphasized the strong affinity Japan has for the United States and its many ties to Texas. More than 45,000 Texas workers are employed by companies based in Japan. Only United Kingdom-based companies employ more Texans.

The proposed TPP agreement would virtually eliminate all foreign import taxes on industrial and consumer goods, benefiting Texas’s top export sectors: information and communication technologies, chemicals, machinery, transportation equipment, and high-tech instruments. Right now, the maximum tariffs in these sectors range from 25 percent to 59 percent. If TPP is approved, nearly 100 percent of U.S. goods exported in those sectors will immediately be duty-free.

That would be a major boost for the economy of Texas, and lead to further expansion of our state’s role in the global economy. Texas has long been economically connected with the rest of the world, and we would disconnect at our economic peril.

Robb is the founding pastor of The Woodlands United Methodist Church and chairman of The Woodlands Township board of directors.