To jump in with a related point on the debate over NAFTA, these trade deals really don't matter much. Insofar as these deals are obnoxious, it's generally because they're massive collections of corporate giveaways, not because they actually drive trade and outsourcing. Whatever else you want to say about the Peru Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, no one really thinks trade with Peru is having a terribly large impact on American jobs. Rather, the pressure is coming from countries like China and India who we don't have formalized agreements with. And that's the nut of it. Relatively little trade is the result of formalized tariff agreements. But they're the concrete things we can fight over, so we end up having a lot of strange proxy battles over things like CAFTA, where the establishment thinks they're defending trade and some liberals think they're opposing outsourcing and really we're all just arguing about a big hunk of corporate welfare. Insofar as trade is a problem, the pressures have much more to do with the advance of communication, shipping, and transportation technologies which have made huge, low-income countries half a world away viable competitors on manufactured goods and electronically transmittable information. Meanwhile, for some smart thinking about trade, let me recommend Jamie Galbraith's recent essay in The American Prospect arguing for a rethink of the populist take on the issue.
