http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/the-political-typology-beyond-red-vs-blue/pp-2014-06-26-typology-0-04/

All republicans agree on how bad Obama, the federal government and help for the poor are.

They disagree on immigration, acceptance of gays, the value of Wall Street and US efforts to solve global problems.

None are too surprising but interesting to see them summarized so succinctly in this poll.

China’s FTA Strategy

Beijing takes a strategic approach on free trade agreements, particularly in the face of challenges such as the TPP.

This post explores the motivations of China’s promotion of FTAs, and examines its FTAs to highlight underlying trends and the future strategies Beijing may pursue in the face of the challenges posed by mega-regional trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Economic Comprehensive Partnership (RCEP.)

China has one of the busiest FTA programs in Asia. Agreements in place include FTAs with countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Meanwhile, FTAs now in the pipeline will boost China’s economic integration with Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Norway, and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. China has recently taken a more comprehensive and vigorous approach to FTAs. For example, agreements with Iceland and Switzerland, signed in 2013, provide wider coverage in goods, services, and investments.

Meanwhile, a number of initiatives are underway to liberalize trade and facilitate investment within the region. For instance, RCEP incorporates a range of Asia-Pacific countries, such as ASEAN, Australia, China, India, Japan, and New Zealand. The fourth round of negotiations was held in Nanning, China, from March 31 to April 4, 2014. it is expected to be concluded by 2015.

On the other hand, the U.S.-centered TPP negotiations have put China under considerable pressure. Though it is open to joining TPP negotiations, given its domestic industrial structure China would find it difficult to accept some of the issues under negotiation. Issues such as state-owned enterprises or labor and environmental standards would impose very high costs on China’s domestic industries. Consequently, Beijing has been cautious on joining TPP talks.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/chinas-fta-strategy/

China seems to be negotiating many bilateral trade agreements rather than going for multilateral deals. Perhaps this is because they are sensitive to maintaining control of their "domestic industrial structure" (weak unions, lots of pollution). That is easier to do with bilateral deals in which they are the larger, stronger partner rather than multilateral deals where things get more complicated.

If TPP does not have them, and it sure seems like it doesn't, then sticking with WTO trading rules (which do not have labor nor environmental standards that affect labor rights in a place like Vietnam) is better than missing the opportunity that TPP could have represented.

To improve labor and environmental standards globally we will have to negotiate enforceable agreements with the rest of the world. Given what we know about TPP it looks like we will have to wait a long time for that.

supporting a strong safety net with high progressive taxation without killing the economy that generates the wealth.

Great find, xchrom. Thanks for posting it.

the republican accusation was that they were both crappy - "flooding our markets with foreign commodities" - and negotiated secretly - "It secretly has made tariff agreements with our foreign competitors".


FDR's RTAA is what gave us "secret trade deals" and 'fast track' for their approval or rejection by Congress.

The complaints against FDR in 1936 were quite similar to the complaints against Obama today even though times and the nature of the agreements has changed.

The 1936 republican party platform looks like it could have been written for the tea party:

It has coerced and intimidated voters by withholding relief to those opposing its tyrannical policies.

It has destroyed the morale of our people and made them dependent upon government.

Appeals to passion and class prejudice have replaced reason and tolerance.

It has created a vast multitude of new offices, filled them with its favorites, set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people.

It has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression.

It secretly has made tariff agreements with our foreign competitors, flooding our markets with foreign commodities.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29639

Danes the highest taxed in Europe, reveals Eurostat

Denmark, Belgium and France are the highest taxed EU countries according to research by the bloc’s statistical agency Eurostat.

The data in Eurostat’s report on ‘Taxation trends’ in the EU, published on Monday (16 June), found that the Danish government collected tax worth 48.1 percent of economic output in 2012.

Overall, the average tax-to-GDP ratio in the EU increased to 39.4 percent in 2012, slightly up from 38.8 percent the previous year. Eurostat says the rate continued to rise in 2013.

The EU continues to have some of the highest taxed countries in the world. Of the major OECD countries outside the bloc, only Norway, at 42 percent, has a higher tax burden. Meanwhile, the US, Canada and Japan have rates of 25 percent, 28 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

http://euobserver.com/news/124616

Germany's taxes totaled about 39% of GDP, Sweden and France at 44%. It's amazing how much in the way of social services and safety net these countries can provide with an extra 15% of GDP in tax revenue. Of course, a stronger middle class and greater income equality are the result.

The Eurostat report itself is at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-DU-13-001/EN/KS-DU-13-001-EN.PDF.

The Corporates and the Crazies

Jeremy Peters and Shaila Dewan write about corporate shock over the sudden fall of Eric Cantor; it’s further confirmation of the story I told in my last column. Corporations and plutocrats had a good deal going: they bankrolled politicians who talked cultural populism during campaigns, but more or less ignored all that and focused on tax cuts and deregulation after the polls closed. And Cantor fit that profile perfectly.

But now the big money has lost control; the base is demanding politicians who don’t just talk the crazy talk, but walk the crazy walk. For a couple of months the story line was that the money was regaining control, but between Cantor and Cochran that narrative has been blown out of the water.

What’s unclear is what comes next. By pivoting so hard to the GOP, the money has lost much of its leverage over the Democrats — yes, there’s Andrew Cuomo and people like him, but it’s not the same as once it was.

How bad is it? So bad that some establishment Republicans — which means people who work for the corporate side — are pining for another run by, yes, Mitt Romney.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/the-corporates-and-the-crazies/

If corporate republicans are thinking about turning back to romney, you know things are bad.

1. “The Sunni radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are popular.” They are not. Opinion polling shows that most Iraqi Sunnis are secular-minded. The ISIS is brutal and fundamentalist. Where the Sunnis have rallied to it, it is because of severe discontents with their situation after the fall of the Baath Party in 2003 with the American invasion. The appearance of video showing ISIS massacring police (most of them Sunnis) in Tikrit will severely detract from such popularity as they enjoyed.

2. “ISIS fighters achieved victory after victory in the Sunni north.” While this assertion is true, and towns continue to fall to it, it is simplistic. The central government troops, many of them Shiite, in Mosul and in towns of the north, were unpopular because representatives of a sectarian Shiite regime. The populace of Mosul, including town quarters and clan groups (‘tribes’) on the city’s outskirts, appear to have risen up in conjunction with the ISIS advance, as Patrick Cockburn argues. It was a pluralist urban rebellion, with nationalists of a socialist bent (former Baathists) joining in. In some instances locals were suppressed by the fundamentalist guerrillas and there already have been instances of local Sunnis helping the Iraqi army reassert itself in Salahuddin Province and then celebrating the departure of ISIS.

3. “Iraqi troops were afraid to fight the radical Sunni guerrillas and so ran away.” While the troops did abandon their positions in Mosul and other towns, it isn’t clear why. There are reports that they were ordered to fall back. More important, if this was a popular uprising, then a few thousand troops were facing hundreds of thousands of angry urbanites and were in danger of being overwhelmed. In Afghanistan’s Mazar-i Sharif in 1997 when the Pashtun Taliban took this largely Tajik and Uzbek city, the local populace abided it af few days and then rose up and killed 8,000 Taliban, expelling them from the city. (A year later they returned and bloodily reasserted themselves). Troops cannot always assert themselves against the biopower of urban masses.

5. “The US should intervene with air power against ISIS.” The Sunni radicals are not a conventional army. There are no lines for the US to bomb, few convoys or other obvious targets. To the extent that their advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk. The Sunnis already have resentments about the Bush administration backing for the Shiite parties after 2003, which produced purges of Sunnis from their jobs and massive unemployment in Sunni areas. For the US to be bombing Sunni towns all these years later on behalf of Mr. al-Maliki would be to invite terrorism against the US. ISIS is a bad actor, but it so far hasn’t behaved like an international terrorist group; it has been oriented to achieving strategic and tactical victories in Syria against the Baath government and the Shiite Alawis, and in Iraq against the Shiite Da’wa Party government. But it could easily morph into an anti-American international terrorist network. The US should avoid actions that would push it in that direction. So far the Baath regime in Syria is winning against the Sunni radicals. The Shiite majority in Iraq can’t easily be overwhelmed by them. Local actors can handle this crisis.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/06/myths-radical-advance.html

Cole's knowledge always injects some sanity into a chaotic situation.