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TODAY IN TAP ONLINE. Lotsa stuff today. James K. Galbraith makes the case that populist progressives need to re-think their approach to trade and globalization.
In a Washington Post essay published late last year, on the eve of the Democrats' ascension to the majority, Senators Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown articulated a trade policy that typifies the consensus view of the party's labor-liberal wing. They criticize "free trade," call for strong labor and environmental standards in future trade agreements, and argue for aggressive policies to open foreign markets to American goods. Their critique reflects a genuine anger, and the concerns their piece embodies deserve to be met. Their program is populist, nationalist, muscular, and in tune with the mood of the Democratic base.In another full-length piece today, Jeff Faux takes a differing view:But it is not reality-based. As policy, it would not achieve the senators' basic objective -- namely, more jobs at higher wages in the United States. As politics, the danger is not that it will fail but that it might succeed. And then, progressives in power will repeat the pattern that conservatives set in 1981, pushing a program based on high expectations and illusions that ends in confusion, reversals, defeats, and an eventual lapse into incoherence and disrepute.
Today, IBM, General Electric, and the other "American" multinational corporations are moving their research and development operations to China, India, and other overseas locations. The United States is now running a trade deficit in high tech. Indeed, the premise that the average American can prosper by thinking up ideas for the rest of the world to produce is bankrupt. A plurality of Americans now believe that the next generation will be worse off. If the nation continues on its current trajectory, they are clearly right.Indeed, Galbraith and Faux disagreed so much, we asked them to discuss -- they did, in "Trade War." Be sure to take a look.
Also in TAP Online today:
- Spencer explains that political reconciliation measures in Iraq are going nowhere fast, and that nobody should anticipate that September will bring, here in the U.S., a real, make-or-break, definitive verdict on the surge strategy or the U.S. occupation.
- Jon Margolis tells us how sucking up to Big Government for private gain is as American as apple pie.
- Harold writes about Enron's enablers and book-cookers, who are all getting off scot free.
--The Editors
