Brain Dead Trade Debate

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Robert L. Borosage
Brain Dead Trade Debate
Posted April 9, 2008 | 09:00 AM (EST)



The economy is tanking. Gas is headed to $4.00 a gallon. One in ten homes are "under water," worth less than their mortgages. The IMF predicts up to $1 trillion in financial losses, meaning banks and securities firms that have written off abut $230 billion are still staring at the abyss. The war in Iraq consumes $12 billion a month, as well as the attention of our leaders, and the lives of too many of our soldiers.

So the President of the United States steps up to the crisis and demands a fast track vote in 90 days from the Congress on.... a trade agreement with Colombia.

Immediately, the editorial pages and establishment columnists trot out their knee jerk "free trade" arguments, demanding that Congress pass the bill. Immediately, both Clinton and Obama - in the midst of a primary in Pennsylvania wracked by the loss of manufacturing jobs - come out against the accord. Their opposition is immediately dismissed as a pander to labor, since just as Obama was embarrassed in Ohio when his economic advisor apparently reassured the Canadian government that Obama really didn't mean his anti-NAFTA rhetoric, Hillary Clinton is forced to stage a public dispatch of chief strategist and pollster Mark Penn, who was advising the Colombian government on how to get the deal passed in his day job. (She couldn't separate herself from her husband who has profited greatly as a consistent supporter of this and all other corporate trade accords)

The arguments for the trade accord are mostly insulting. The Colombians will benefit greatly, we're told, although their goods already come into America duty free. The US will benefit greatly, although any increased trade with Colombia will be a rounding error in our trade accounts.

It's not really about trade at all, we're told, it's a question of national security, designed to bolster an ally against the hated Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and to counter the rising anti-American populism in Latin America. But the anti-American populism in Latin America is a backlash stemming from the calamitous failure of the "Washington consensus" that the trade accord expresses. And the most likely effect of the trade accord, as NAFTA demonstrated, will be for heavily subsidized US food exports to displace to peasants from their lands, undermine wages in the cities, and reward financial elites. This will only strengthen the rebellion in Colombia, feed the drug economy, and bolster the backlash to failed US policies.

But this entire debate is taking place as if Ronald Reagan were president and it was still "morning in America." It is simply goofy to be talking about a trade deal with Colombia when the US economy is declining, and the world financial markets are hanging on by their fingernails. You're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/brain-dead-trade-debate_b_95786.html

[Romulox]

1. Opposing the Colombia deal allows Clinton and Obama to quietly continue supporting

WTO and MFN for China, which is a far greater threat to our standard of living than Colombia could ever be.

Unfortunately, both Hillary Clinton and the "anti-DLC" Barack Obama are dedicated cheap labor democrats. Working people are guaranteed to suffer under either of their administrations, just like working people were largely left out of the Clinton boom in the 90s.

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. The arrogance and corruption of DC is why there is even

a discussion of Free Trade, in a election year. Jesus!! You would even think that even the Republicans would be running like OJ through the airport away from this issue!(I doubt the Dittoheads would support this bill either)