WASHINGTON, April 2 – The 1,900-member U.S. Business and Industry Council today criticized President Obama for wasting an historic opportunity at the G-20 summit to promote lasting global economic recovery by pushing to rebalance dangerously lopsided trade and financial flows.

Council President Kevin L. Kearns said that, although Obama's counterparts in the Group of 20 world economies rejected his proposal for massive new stimulus spending, Obama's greater failure was his unwillingness to tackle foreign barriers and other predatory trade practices.  These policies, said Kearns, "have led to U.S. over-consumption and over-borrowing, fueled unsustainable American trade deficits, strapped the U.S. economy with dangerous levels of debt, and turned the world economy into a house of cards."

Continued Kearns, "None of the president's G-20 goals, and none of the summit's agreements, will re-start sufficient U.S. growth or reduce the imbalances ultimately responsible for the global crisis.  Genuine health in the U.S. and global economies will remain a pipe dream unless foreign mercantilist systems that warp trade and capital flows are dismantled."

As a result, said Kearns, "President Obama achieved nothing at the G-20 summit for America's struggling domestic manufacturers, their employees, and the millions of working families that depend on them."

Instead of lobbying for a global stimulus program, Kearns said, Obama should have focused at the summit on urging America's trade partners to move quickly to reduce the bloated U.S. trade deficit by exporting less and consuming more at home, or face the prospect of unilateral U.S. measures to ramp up domestic production and to dampen imports.

Trade deficit reduction, explained Kearns, is essential if the United States is to rebuild a productive base big enough to support first-world living standards without reckless borrowing, and to replace recent bubble-ized global economic growth with healthy, sustainable worldwide growth.

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