Ken at Dirty Water has a good post up on trade. Myself, I’ve found the TPMCafe forums depressing, not only for the sense of being outnumbered on an issue I do care about, but also by the sheer extent of the anti-free-traders’ tendency to impute the worst motives to the other side. Also, I can’t […]
I don’t know if David Sirota represents any larger trend besides David Sirota, but if he does, this post is enough to put me off of it. If I wanted wild, Know-Nothing rantings against policy journalists as “elitists with cushy jobs,” I’d vote Republican.
Trade policy seems the bone of contention here, and I’m wondering […]
I still haven’t responded to the good (and tough) comments I got on my free-trade postings last week. To be clear, I wasn’t coming out with a ringing endorsement of CAFTA, which seems to be riddled with problems, but rather wondering why center-left Democrats were silent in defense of free trade principles. I still think […]
Lynne of Left in Lowell fame interjects in the comments section,
I hate free trade. NAFTA and all of it. Stupid rules that only hurt the little people, but benefit large corporations.
I do, however, adore fair trade. If we did it right, with environmental protections (and not allowing, say, one place TO GET SUED by a […]
Matt Yglesias gives the best criticism of the proposed Centeral American Free Trade Agreement that I’ve come across. But I’m wondering: where are the agreement’s proponents? Maybe I’m reading the wrong things and watching the wrong TV shows (I can never stomach Meet the Press), but I’ve yet to see anyone put forth the case […]
At Mother Jones’ blog, Bradford Plumer riffs off of a Democracy Arsenal post and wonders why "free trade" and "fair trade" liberals can’t find political common ground.
Part of the problem, I think, is a simple trust issue. Whenever the "fair trade" crowd raises objections to this or that treaty, as with CAFTA, the neoliberal […]
My friend Derek has before asked me if, given my non-Hegelian bent, whether I subscribed to some End of History thesis, the notion that political and economic liberalism has once and for all triumphed over alternatives. I wasn’t very good at answering the question: I felt that a) yes in the medium term liberalism and […]
Blame India Watch points out a study at Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy titled Executive Excess’ Report: CEO Pay Soars at Companies That Send Jobs Overseas. It’s a polemic arguing that CEOs get “perverse incentives to destroy communities” by shipping jobs abroad and as such offers the usual lefty case […]
The story til now: Third World country, in breaking off the shackles of colonial rule, ends up fighting a civil war, with Marxist-Leninist side getting the upper hand. U.S. fights brutal but ultimately unsuccesful war to prevent Communists from getting power. After a couple of decades of self-rule but subsistance economy, this “Communist” country begins […]
From today’s Washington Post:
But upon learning that the judges were with the World Trade Organization, and that they had ruled U.S. cotton subsidies to be in violation of international trade rules, [Texas cotton farmer George] Hoelscher began to perceive some dark truths.
“We’re losing our sovereignty in a lot of ways,” said Hoelscher, who farms […]
Slate’s William Saletan picks apart the new anti-Bush ads from one 527 organization, the Media Fund. His verdict? The ads are perhaps politically smart but morally ugly. Criticism of economic policy has morphed into claiming that Bush is “creating jobs” overseas; criticism of Iraq has morphed into treating the Iraqis as the new welfare-queens. Here’s […]
The standard liberal rejoinder to the Republicans’ claim to be the free trade party is that Bush and the Congress put through steel tarriffs and agricultural subsidies on a scale that surpassed much of what the Democrats could imagine for trade protectionism. In fact, the only substantial difference in the parties’ stances is the nature […]
One of the odd turns of this primary season has been to see John Edwards - formerly the centrists candidate - pick up Dick Gephardt’s protectionist mantle and rail against NAFTA. And the news media - reporters and commentators alike - have devoted a lot of attention to corporate outsourcing. In the face of the […]
I know I shouldn’t be coming to the intellectual defense of global outsourcing (There but for the grace of God… ). But there is a tendency for its critics to attack it without considering the flip side of economic activity, and to imagine that . Today, Noam Schreiber at the New Republic takes on a […]
I rather enjoyed the NewsHour’s interview with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin last night, in part because Rubin is such an affable personality and capable of speaking about policy matters in an engaging way. One of the most striking moments came in his criticism on the current administration’s and Congress’s fiscal policy:
PAUL SOLMAN: So when […]