Is Obama a Mercantilist?

Scott Lincicome and Don Boudreaux cite to President Obama's op-ed in the NY Times last week -- titled "Exporting Our Way to Stability" -- and make the case that he is a mercantilist, or at least sounds like one.  Here's Scott:

As nice as it is to hear the President advocate trade and global economic integration (including passage of the long-stalled US-Korea FTA), it is utterly impossible for anyone who supports free markets and/or understands basic economics to be happy with the President's strategy - one that can unfortunately be summarized in a single word: mercantilism.

And here's Don:

The mercantilist tone of Mr. Obama’s essay – its bear-like embrace of the fallacy that trade’s success is measured by how much the home country exports rather than by how much it imports – suggests that any trade agreements that he reaches with other governments will do far less to increase the prosperity of ordinary Americans than to enhance the monopolistic privileges and profits of politically influential U.S. corporations and unions.

I agree that he sounds like one.  I searched through the op-ed, and what stood out to me was that there was no reference to the benefits of imports.  Instead, the main point of the piece is that exports create jobs:

We want to be known not just for what we consume, but for what we produce. And the more we export abroad, the more jobs we create in America. In fact, every $1 billion we export supports more than 5,000 jobs at home.

It is for this reason that I set a goal of doubling America’s exports in the next five years. To do that, we need to find new customers in new markets for American-made goods. And some of the fastest-growing markets in the world are in Asia, where I’m traveling this week.

Exports do lead to jobs, of course.  But at the same time, imports can cause job losses.  As a result, I've always been a bit uncomfortable using "jobs" as the exclusive basis for generating support for trade agreements.  Nevertheless, it appears that Obama and his trade team believe this is the kind of rhetoric that is needed in order to pass trade agreements.  They may very well be right.  No doubt they have thought more about how to sell free trade to the public than I have.  As much as I would love to hear Obama explain how low priced imports are good for American consumers and the economy, perhaps it would not play very well.  Still, it would be nice to see a high profile politician give it a try some day, just to see what would happen.