POLITICS

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), saying “the United States and this Administration have no trade policy,” Saturday called on the White House to impose restraints on shoe imports to help the suffering domestic footwear industry.

“It is time we got beyond simplistic catchwords that have immobilized us for so long,” he said in the Democratic response to President Reagan’s weekly radio address. “Free trade does not really exist in the modern market.”

“The U.S. shoe industry is literally withering on the vine due to a surge in footwear imports that reached 75% of the U.S. market in 1985,” Sasser said. In the senator’s home state, Tennessee, once the fifth-largest shoe-producing state in the country, 12 shoe factories have closed in the last 18 months.

Disarming in Trade War

“Far more is at stake here than the fate of a single industry. Frankly, we’re dealing with the credibility of our entire system of trade law,” Sasser said. “If the President fails to act here, where the evidence of import damage is truly extraordinary, we will be declaring unilateral disarmament in the intensifying battle for world trade.”

The President is required under law to act by next Sunday on a recommendation made by the International Trade Commission in June that he impose a novel shoe import quota system, in which the government would auction the right to import certain amounts of shoes.

“The International Trade Commission found that the shoe industry deserves and needs temporary relief, but the continued vacillation of the White House . . . only affirms what some of us have suspected for some time: that the United States and this Administration have no trade policy,” Sasser said.

“The belief that there is no middle ground between absolute free trade and absolute protectionism is largely responsible for the trade crisis we face today,” he added.

Trade Deficit Zooms

He said that the scope of that crisis is indicated by the growth of the nation’s trade deficit from $28 billion in 1981 to “the very real prospect of trade deficits that will have increased fivefold, to $150 billion” in 1985.

“For the first time in this century, the United States is now a debtor nation and our main export right now is American jobs,” Sasser said.

The problem, he said, is not with Japan or Canada or any other foreign nation. “The problem is ours and it’s a matter of gross inaction,” he said.

“The protectionist label is a red herring when virtually every government in the world seeks to assist its domestic industries with subsidies, with currency manipulation or with quotas,” he said.

A member of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners who led a nationwide search to hire a new LAPD chief and sparked condemnation from activists for his previous counterterrorism research is stepping down.

Erroll Southers confirmed his plans to resign through a spokesperson on Friday, ending a stormy two-year tenure on the influential civilian panel that watches over the LAPD.

The spokesperson said that Southers, 68, wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue other professional opportunities — something that wasn’t always allowed by the demands of serving as a commissioner. The officials often spend time outside their weekly meetings attending community events.

According to the spokesperson, Southers was not asked to submit his resignation, but she declined to say more about the timing of his departure.

Southers has been a member of the panel since 2023, when Mayor Karen Bass picked him to serve out the term of a departing commissioner.

Southers remained after serving out that term because of a bureaucratic loophole that allows new members to join any city commission if the City Council fails to vote on their appointment within 45 days. When the council members took no action on Southers earlier this month after his re-nomination by the mayor, a seat on the commission remained his by default.

His last commission meeting is expected to be Oct. 21 and he will step down at the end of that week. A replacement has not been announced by the mayor.

Southers had a long career in law enforcement before switching to academia and earning his doctorate in public policy. He worked as police officer in Santa Monica and later joined the FBI. He is currently a top security official in the administration at USC.

During this time on the commission, Southers pushed for changes to the way that the department hires and recruits new officers.

But more than any other commissioner, Southers has accumulated a loud chorus of detractors who point to his work on counterterrorism in the mid-2000s in Israel — which has especially become a lightning rod because of the ongoing crisis in Gaza.

Southers’ abrupt departure underscores the increasing difficulty in filling out one of the city’s most influential commissions. The panel was down a member for months after a former commissioner, Maria “Lou” Calanche, resigned so she could run for a City Council seat on the Eastside.

One previous candidate dropped out of the running after a disastrous hearing before the council, and another would-be commissioner quietly withdrew from running earlier this year.

Next Wednesday, a council committee will consider the nomination of Jeff Skobin, a San Fernando Valley car dealership executive and son of a former commissioner. Skobin’s move to the commission would still need approval from the full council.