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Policy Issues

briefings and reports
white papers
analysis

Analytical writing is designed to shed light, not heat. My graduate training at the University of Chicago gave me a good start at learning to think. A six-year stint teaching and writing in New York was next. Work in the 1970s on federal grants and contracts taught me something about policy and rhetoric. Owning and operating two businesses in the '80s provided another perspective, and learning the ways of Washington in the '90s offered another. I worked on the 1993-94 Clinton health care campaign, which came apart from political rather than policy failures.

Good analytical writing has to persuade, yes, but its function is didactic. The reader wants to uncover critical information, i.e., learn something.

Briefings
and Reports

A Brief Analysis of Political and Social Issues in GATT
November 1994

Note: This piece was part of a white paper on GATT which I edited and produced for the president of the Laborers' Union. The idea was to present him a more or less unbiased review of the issues without a "labor" slant.

The Political Situation
Back in April of this year [1994] it seemed that passage of GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] would be a sure thing in both houses of Congress. After all, the Republicans had worked diligently for five years to sponsor and flesh out the agreement prior to the Clinton administration’s endorsement of it. Over this summer the politics began to unravel for the administration, and now GATT, while it has a better chance of passing the House, is ever more under fire in both houses.

Formal opposition has centered on the sovereignty issue, which really covers the protectionist argument. Recently, the U.S. lost its case against Mexico and European countries which claimed that our banning of Mexican tuna (because their netting drowns porpoises) was an unfair trade barrier. Likewise, the European Union (on behalf of Mercedes-Benz and BMW) challenged U.S. fuel efficiency standards, the gas guzzler and the luxury taxes, charging protection-ism. The GATT panel recently ruled against them. So the U.S. has both won and lost in the exchanges.

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John F. Goodman, Ph.D.
WordChoice™
207-582-3950

jfgoodman@wordchoice.com