This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 14th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

The President's Trade Agenda is all wrapped up in exports. Exports are important, but as Dan

Eichenson argues, exports are only part of the value

that trade delivers around the world.

Eichenson is co-author of the new Cato Free Trade Bulletin, Beyond Exports, a better case

for free trade. He's also Associate Director of the

Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. In the 2010 State of the

Union address, President Obama made this pledge to double exports in five years.

That has since become the centerpiece, really, of the Obama administration's trade policy.

It's not necessarily a bad idea to double exports, but by remaining silent on imports and by only talking about exports all the time, it serves to demonize imports. Americans think, you know, unfortunately we have this

tendency to think in terms of scoreboard metaphor, sports metaphors. And if we want to increase

our exports, but we see imports rising, we think we're losing a trade.

And the president really has not done a good job talking about the value of imports, not only to consumers.

There are obvious benefits to consumers who have access to a multitude of new products. There's competition

I mean we avail ourselves of all sorts of nifty devices nowadays which would not be possible, smartphones and

iPads, etc, if we didn't have access to this global supply chain.

But President Obama acts as though it is American producers against producers abroad and that there's really

no benefit of hailing ourselves of access to imports.

55% of the value of U.S. imports is imports made by U.S. producers, raw materials,

intermediate goods, capital equipment, and the president continues to talk about exports.

And as a result, what happens is that when the trade deficit rises or we're in a political campaign mode, politicians

become extremely responsive to the import competing industries.

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