5 things the Olympics can teach us about trade policy

We can learn a lot about trade policy by looking at the Summer Olympics.

The largest peacetime gathering of the world, this multination spectacle brings athletes from many countries together every four years to compete across many events, many sports, and many days.

{mosads}Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently invoked the Olympics to school GOP nominee Donald Trump on the politics of fear, suggesting that fearful competitors, like fearful nations, can’t win gold medals. And while that point is well-taken, Clinton herself needs to understand that the imagery of the Olympics is also a powerful metaphor for trade and the gains that trade brings the world.

Here are five ways how.

Trade is timeless. Like the Olympics, which dates back to 776 B.C., international trade seems like it has been with us forever. Trade’s origins stretch back that far, if not longer. Yet the goods we trade include many of the same kinds of products we traded more than 3,000 years ago. At the same time, like the Olympics, trade constantly brings us innovation. New events in the Olympics appear every four years, while new products and services appear even more frequently. Yet despite this innovation, each Olympiad is inexorably linked back to its predecessors. Michael Phelps recently reminded us of this when he broke a 2,100-year old record for the most individual Olympic titles, held previously by one of his Rhodes forebears.

Trade needs rules and those rules need to be enforced. One need only read about the doping scandal that’s engulfed the Russian Olympic team to know that people will try to cheat, especially in competition. Of course all sports competitions — possibly with the exception of Olympic rugby — have a set of rules by which athletes conduct themselves. Fair, understandable, and predictably enforced rules are necessary for balanced competition to occur.

The same goes for trade. Whether it is illegal subsidies, theft of intellectual property or rigged procurement requirements, trade must overcome any number of hurdles to maintain a level playing field. And that’s one reason why trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and trade agencies like the World Trade Organization are so important. They are a body of rules to which nations bind themselves to make sure we can compete on that level field.

Sometimes, the other team wins. While anyone following the U.S. media’s coverage of the Olympics may think only U.S. athletes are stepping to the top of the medal stand, the reality is that more medals are won by non-U.S. athletes throughout the event. This absurdly obvious revelation is a good thing, as it means the benefits of competition are shared globally by those who have trained properly and fought hard.

Similarly, international trade is most often a win-win proposition, enabling farmers, manufacturers, retailers and services providers all over the world — as well as the workers they employ and the consumers they serve — to benefit from expanded commercial opportunities. Like the Olympics, while trade means some companies or individuals are left behind, it doesn’t mean that trade is bad. Rather, it means a chance for our open globally focused economy to provide new opportunities to retrain and compete anew.

Competition makes us better. On a related point, it is the knowledge that somebody else is trying to beat us that makes us try harder. How many times have we heard of the Olympic gymnast, swimmer or runner, who was crushed by an opponent, only to rededicate and refocus so they could come back four years later and win the gold? Nobody likes to lose. But winning after losing can be that much better especially if that loss taught us valuable ways to compete.

Trade requires cooperation. The five multicolored interlocking rings of the modern Olympics logo teaches us about international inter-dependence. No ring touches every other ring, yet they are all connected and the absence of any one would destroy the entire image. Similarly international trade connects us all, in ways we don’t even realize. Goods and services consumed every day throughout the U.S. are only possible with contributions made by individuals in countries around the world.

Of course, trade incites nowhere near the excitement as the Olympics, and that is perhaps part of the reason why trade policy has taken such a beating this year.

Social media has exploded with images of Simone Biles vaulting, Katie Ledecky outstroking fellow swimmers, and North and South Korean competitors embracing, just to name a few. But we don’t often revel in the same way with the image of container ships making port, a truckload of corn ready for export or cargo speeding its way to your nearest store. And this is understandable, since trade is now such an everyday occurrence.

But with the Olympics ending soon, perhaps we should channel some of the enthusiasm for the Games and focus a bit on those everyday benefits we derive from trade.

After all, Tokyo is four years away.

Lamar is executive vice president of the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) and a frequent contributor on trade policy issues.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.