Missing: Our Trade Strategy
By Harold Meyerson
Thursday, April 10, 2008; Page A23
President Bush has sent his trade pact with Colombia to Capitol Hill, and suddenly Washington is not only ablaze with cherry blossoms but cluttered by chestnuts. Every old argument for the virtues of free trade is being recycled by the league of American editorialists, whose all-but-universal commitment to a failed policy will surely excite the wonder of future historians.
The amazing thing about the free-traders' arguments is that they never change.
What's been missing in America's trade policy is a preference for Americans. The object of trade in China is to help the Chinese nation. German trade is designed to help Germany; Scandinavian, to help the Scandinavian nations. the U.S. government has never taken on the mission of defending the American economy, or the American people, in the global economy. That is not the only reason the broadly shared prosperity of the three decades following World War II is now a distant memory, but it is a certainly a major reason.
In the absence of such a national economic strategy, is it any wonder that by margins of better than two to one, Americans now oppose free trade? Even the relatively few editorialists who acknowledge that the nation needs to do more to help our economically beleaguered populace insist that new trade deals should be consummated before governmental measures that might augment the power and income of actual Americans. But why? Why not first develop a coherent national strategy to foster better and more rewarding jobs here at home, and only then return to the regimen of trade pacts with other nations? Why, in the rush to cut these deals, do the American people amount to no more than an afterthought?
excerpted from Washingtonpost
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/09/AR2008040903401.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2008 01:37PM by ferfux.