President Obama and his friends in Congress have levied billions of dollars in new taxes to secure passage of their domestic agenda. This you probably already know. But you might not know that the folks paying the taxes are American exporters, that they've been doing it for months now, and that U.S. labor unions and foreign governments, not the Treasury Department, are the ones collecting.

Such is the truth behind the President's accidental war on America's exporters.

I say "accidental war" because the administration's public statements, and basic economics, belie overt bellicosity. This summer, the White House announced a new effort to help U.S. exporters by expanding foreign markets, and the President routinely speaks of exports' critical role in the long-term stability of...