Rightwing vs. Leftwing Populists on Global Trade

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/07/01/rightwing-vs-leftwing-populists-global-trade

EPI president Lawrence Mishel was moved to respond in a blog post tilted “Trump’s Trade Scam.”

“If he is so keen to help working people, why does he then steer the discussion back toward the traditional corporate agenda of tax cuts for corporations and the rich?” Mishel wrote, hastening to distance himself from Trump.

Progressives who have long criticized trade deals that favor multinational corporations, suppress wages, accelerate outsourcing, and replace local democracy with unelected tribunals, shrink from keeping company with the racist, isolationist right.

This is equally true in Trump’s America and in Britain, newly divorced from the rest of Europe. Guardian columnist Gary Younge concurs with Michel on the fraudulence of rightwing anti-globalism, and particularly the immigrant-bashing Brexit campaign:

“The very people who are slashing resources—the Tory right— and diverting what’s left to the wealthy are the ones rallying the poor by blaming migrants for the lack of resources,” Younge wrote.

“Not content with urinating on our leg and telling us it’s raining, they have found someone to blame for the weather.”

Rightwing populists are making a lot of noise about the weather lately—that is, the lousy economic climate brought on by trade deals that favor corporations at the expense of labor. As a result they are making inroads with an anxious working class.

[TubbersUK]

1. K & R

Last edited Sat Jul 2, 2016, 04:11 AM - Edit history (2)

Not least, because of this nicely trenchant summary:

“The very people who are slashing resources—the Tory right— and diverting what’s left to the wealthy are the ones rallying the poor by blaming migrants for the lack of resources,” Younge wrote.

“Not content with urinating on our leg and telling us it’s raining, they have found someone to blame for the weather.”

[pampango]

2. Some great points about beating Trump and Brexit-type right wing populists without becoming them.

“Progressives can’t afford to cede economic populism to the man who could prove to be the most effective white nationalist campaigner of our generation,” Tarso Luís Ramos, executive director of the rightwing watchdog group Political Research Associates put it to me recently, when I interviewed him about Donald Trump.

Perhaps the biggest difference between left and rightwing views of global trade is that while rightwing populists blame immigrants and foreign workers, progressives see workers across borders making common cause.