Now that TPP is dead...can we start talking about alternative policies on trade?

[Ken Burch]

I think, among all the other things we are doing, we should be proposing a new set of trade ideas.

There's no reason why we can't have relatively open markets between countries WITHOUT restricting the ability of any given state to establish environmental, labor, and consumer policies as strong as the electorates in those countries would like them to be, and without restricting the rights of individual countries to spend as much as they want on healthcare, education, and social provision.

There's no reason we shouldn't have representatives of labor, environmental, consumer, and ethnic/racial/religious minorities as part of the teams that negotiate these agreements.

There's no reason we shouldn't be able to set future agreements up so that representatives of those groups sit on the tribunals that will settle dispute arising from the agreements.

And there's no reason we can't make the entire text of all proposed future agreements for congressional and public examination.

[tavernier]

1. Sure. Trump will trade our reputation

for their oil.

See how easy it will be?

[Wounded Bear]

2. Actually, I think Trump will trade Ukraine for Russian oil...

and other parts of eastern Europe like the Baltic states and certainly Belarus.

Russia wants to rebuild the old empire.

[Ken Burch]

3. Perhaps Russia does want that.

Passing TPP would not have affected their attempts to achieve that, though.

[tavernier]

4. As I'm of Latvian heritage,

I totally agree with you. It is possibly my greatest fear. I still have relatives there who lived through the soviet nightmare.

[Ken Burch]

6. I mean for the next presidential election.

What we should be doing now is to listen to those on the progressive side of the spectrum who opposed TPP and incorporate their ideas(some of which I offered in the OP) in any future agreement.

Nobody in that category was ever saying we shouldn't trade with other countries...just that we shouldn't throw the 99% under the bus in the name of trade.

[Wounded Bear]

9. It certainly bears discussion...

I live in a blue west coast state where trade is a big source of revenue, wages, etc. I was a bit ambivalent about TPP, but the fact is that Trump's ideas on trade as stated so far would cause a huge hit to our economy. I understand that those in the Midwest have opinions strongly held. I'm just not sure that TPP was as bad as, say, NAFTA or CAFTA.

I never read it. Perhaps I trusted Pres Obama a bit too much on how he negotiated it.

One of the problems, of course, is that the corporations demanding free trade are some of the strongest opponents of the wage and environmental protections we around here all want. I know that the Repubs in Congress and Trump won't support them. Simply backing out of TPP seems to also leave a vaccuum in the west/southwest Pacific region that China is set to dominate.

It's never as simple as people want to think.

[DanTex]

5. Trade agreements don't prevent states from establishing environmental or labor regulations.

It's the opposite, they require countries to abide by environmental and labor standards which they would not have abided by without those agreements in place. Labor rights in Vietnam, for example, are one of the big casualties of the failure of TPP.

Also, the failure of TPP means generally that US economic influence in Asia is going to wane, which in turn means that rather than the US pushing the labor and environmental standards, it's going to be China setting the pace.

[Ken Burch]

8. We have never used our economic influence in Asia to achieve anything progressive or positive.

All we've used it for their was to help corporate power screw over the people and make it impossible for the people to fight back against them.

Few people other than American billionaires would have gained anything from TPP's passage...it was never going to be good for workers, the poor, or the environment...and I hope you'd agree at this point that keeping the door slightly open for TPP was never worth making it easier for Trump in the fall.

Why can't we start over and re-imagine trade from the bottom up, rather than as a top-down thing?

Why not develop new trade proposals that protect the interests of the global majority, not just the 1%?

[DanTex]

11. That's not true. E.g. TPP was going to achieve something progressive, which is improvement

of labor standards in countries like Vietnam. But way beyond that, it's utterly absurd to say that our economic influence has not been used to achieve anything progressive/positive. I seem to recall someone once telling Beijing that "women's rights are human rights", a statement that wouldn't have had nearly the impact it had if it wasn't for American economic as well as political power worldwide.

And beyond that even, international trade has lifted hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of people worldwide out of poverty. If you look at the "global middle class", they've made huge strides in the last 20 years, thanks largely to trade, which means, yes, US trade policy has helped a lot of people in the world. That's both progressive and positive.

Now, you do have a point that the American working/middle class hasn't seen those benefits from trade, and in fact working class wages in the US have been stagnant for the last few decades. The thing is, the American working class is at about the 85th percentile in global wages. And, yeah, the 85th percentile matters too. Globally speaking, they are the upper class, but they are still people.

But if an alien came down to earth and witnessed the dramatic improvement in standards of living for people in the global 20th through 80th percentiles, and then saw people complaining about how this wasn't "progressive" because the people at the 85th through 90th percentiles didn't see the same size gains, they would think it was insane.

[Ken Burch]

12. Trade did that. We didn't have to have NAFTA or GATT to have trade, though.

It didn't require mechanisms that allow foreign corporations to force education or human needs spending down in the countries they trade with by labeling that spending as "subsidies to domestic corporations"

And we didn't need to have only people from the corporate world drafting those agreements. We also didn't need to agree that no one representing workers, the poor, environmentalists and people of color would be on the tribunals.

[DanTex]

16. Yeah, we did. Not just those, but tons of other smaller trade agreements with different countries.

There needs to be an international legal framework in order for trade to thrive, and those and other agreement provided that.

Sure, some of the provisions can be changed for the better. And I'm in favor of things like stronger labor rights. But let's be honest, the reason for the opposition to trade in the US, both from the left and now from Trump, is because of outsourcing. US voters don't care about labor conditions in Vietnam, they care about jobs in the US. And the fundamental reality, that trade and automation have produced a transfer of US jobs from manufacturing to often lower-paying service jobs, wouldn't have changed much even if we had stronger labor and environmental provisions in trade agreements. And, yeah, the tribunal system is flawed and favors corporations, but it doesn't really come up very often.

There's not really a way to change the fact that things can be manufactured less expensively in countries where wages are lower.

[JI7]

7. TPP was the best we had under the best president. anything else this president does will be far

worse.

[Ken Burch]

13. I didn't say Trump would do anything good.

I was talking about stuff we could do next time we got a Dem in the White House.

When that happens, we need to have bottom-up, grassroots participation in drafting trade policies...so the policies represent the people not just the 1%.

[Mosby]

10. we need trade agreements and probably tariffs

Like this guy talked about:

What about free trade?
A: We’ve gone the first mile. I don’t disagree with the premise of the free traders. But we need an emerging middle class in these countries, and we’re not getting one. So now is the time to have labor and environmental standards attached to trade agreements.
Q: What if they say no?
A: Then I’d say, “Fine, that’s the end of free trade.”
Q: What do you mean, that’s the end of free trade? Then we slap tariffs on these countries?
A: Yes.
Q: So you’d be in favor of tariffs at that point.
A: If necessary. Look, Jimmy Carter did this in foreign policy. If you can’t get people to observe human rights, and say that we’re going to accept products from countries that have kids working no overtime, no time and a half, no reasonable safety precautions-- I don’t think we ought to be buying those kinds of products in this country. We’re enabling that to happen.


http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Howard_Dean_Free_Trade.htm

[Ken Burch]

14. Some of the ideas there are good.

We don't have to frame it as not being "free trade". Free trade doesn't have to mean letting global corporations call the tune.

It can mean they get to trade but they'll be expected to treat everyone decently as part of the thing.

[Mosby]

19. I agree, call it "fair trade".

[Motown_Johnny]

15. Start talking? Some of us have been trying to do this for decades.

Trade policies should be based on the conditions which exist within the country we are trading with. Trade policies are not foreign aid and should not be confused with them. They are also not ways to protect big businesses in any way shape or form.

Trade policies are about fairness.

If a country has low environmental standards, it should cost them more to trade with us than if they had higher standards. If a country treats it's workers poorly (pay and working conditions) then it should cost them more to trade with us than if they treat their workers well.

We can't compete with countries that treat their workers poorly and/or destroy their environment. By creating economic incentives, with our trade policies, for improving conditions within their country we make competition fairer and improve conditions within the country we are trading with.

Why is that so hard?

[Ken Burch]

17. Let me rephrase that...can't we bring in these other great ideas about trade

that have already been out there for years?

You've just demonstrated that we don't have to assume the only choices are "free trade" on NAFTA/GATT/TPP terms or 19th-century style "protectionism".

We can have trade with justice.

[DanTex]

18. Problem is, there are vast disparities in wage levels between countries.

And that's because there are vast disparities in wealth between countries. Sure, there should be stronger labor and environmental standards, but that is not going to make much difference in light of the enormous wealth differences between first world and developing countries.

It is a bit mind-boggling when people say it's "unfair" to American workers that they have to compete with workers in other countries that are paid a fraction as much. It takes a particular kind of first-world privilege to think that the American workers are getting the short end of the stick there.

What is truly unfair is that the US is so much wealthier than, say, Vietnam, that workers in Vietnam earn so much less than American workers to begin with. Even if American factory workers get laid off and have to get minimum wage jobs at WalMart, they will still be much better off economically than the Vietnamese factory workers that replaced them.

[maxrandb]

21. That's exactly what TPP attempted to do

But demonizing it did get a rise out of Bernie's crowds, didn't it?

[Motown_Johnny]

22. TPP was an attempt to expand American power via trade deals.

I think Pres. Obama did a spectacular job, but on this issue I believe his priorities were wrong.
Trade deals should be trade deals, not ways to expand influence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/business/international/trans-pacific-partnership-obama.html?_r=0

^snip^

While administration officials and bipartisan surrogates will counter opponents’ economic arguments, a big focus will be on national security. Mr. Obama has emphasized that the pact would expand American influence in the Asia-Pacific region as a counterweight to China, which is not part of the pact.

[maxrandb]

20. Sure

I'm confident that Trump and his team will most assuredly have reps from "labor, environmental, consumer and ethnic minorities" fully engaged and will take their recommendations "under advisement".

The idiots who demonized TPP during the election got exactly what they wanted, eh?

Better to have China set environmental and labor standards.

Better to have China take the lead in the largest emerging market in the world.

Better to have Trump looking out for middle class Americans than Clinton.

The shortsightedness of this absolutely ignorant argument about "trade" is going to cost us trillions.

I'm sure any day now, those rusty old steel plants are going to start humming. Hey, you know, maybe they will at $7.50 an hour.

Thank God we punished President Obama and other Democrats who actually believe in fair and free trade.

It's "Morning in America" right now, isn't it?