[CTC] It's Time for Trade Policies that Benefit Us All

[Hillary Haden]

https://www.thestand.org/2020/12/its-time-for-trade-policies-that-benefit-all/


*Decades of failed ‘free trade’ deals must end. Instead, let’s manage
globalization to raise wages, create jobs, and protect the environment.*



*By HILLARY HADEN*
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(Dec. 3, 2020) — Everyone we know is “for” trade. We can’t remember ever
meeting anyone who is “against” trade. This simplistic view of
globalization — that everyone is either for or against trade — brought
grief to millions of workers and families in America.

Thomas Friedman wrote several popular books on globalization. He once said
that he didn’t need to read CAFTA — the free trade agreement for Central
American countries. The title of the document said “Free Trade.” That was
all he needed to know.

Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz puts the question more productively,
“How should we manage globalization?” That framing treats trade like any
other public policy issue. We talk about good or bad policies for health
care, education, transportation, immigration, infrastructure, financial
regulation, workforce development, and many other important issues. Aren’t
there good and bad policies for trade?

For almost 40 years, leaders and scholars have promised improved well-being
if we integrate our economy with the rest of the world. That intent was
built into the design of the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and hundreds
of other “free-trade” agreements around the world.

That approach to trade has enabled corporations to make products anywhere
in the world and sell them everywhere. This way of managing globalization
has real-life consequences. Global corporations scour the globe for
locations where workers are most exploitable and environmental regulations
are the weakest. The U.S. industrial base has declined as a result.

That is the lived experience of communities locally and nationally who
remember making steel and aluminum, home appliances, electronic equipment,
televisions, cars, computers, cameras, ships, pharmaceuticals, and many
other products. That work has gone into the global economy.

Rural areas experience a similar loss of livelihood as thousands of family
farms disappear, towns lose their small businesses, health care facilities
and schools, and families watch their children migrate to population
centers in search of economic security.

That lived experience was palpable enough to kill support in Congress for
President Obama’s last “free trade” deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
and strong enough to push rural and working-class voters to reject Hillary
Clinton and elect Donald Trump in 2016, in hopes that he would fight for
their jobs and communities.

The Seattle Times and others have suggested recently that an incoming Biden
administration should prioritize a business-as-usual trade agenda and
attempt to revive the defeated Trans-Pacific Partnership. That would be a
mistake.

It is important to recognize that the WTO-NAFTA free-trade approach is
exhausted, socially, economically, and politically. It is too late to
rescue failed “free trade” policies. We need a new strategy — one different
from the neoliberal policies of the past and different from the nationalist
policies promoted by Donald Trump.

China, Japan, Nordic countries, South Korea, Germany, and other countries
manage globalization in ways that build their domestic economies, maintain
economic security, and invest in industries that can compete in the future.
These countries are not “cheating.” They are managing their economies to
improve the well-being of their citizens. In our own history, we proudly
devised similar industrial strategies.

We heard echoes of that in the recent presidential campaign — proposed
investments in infrastructure, research and development, alternative
energy, health care, and education. These policies could be aligned to
encourage production in our domestic economy, and require high-road labor
and environmental standards as a condition for access to our markets.

It’s too bad Thomas Friedman didn’t read the full free-trade agreement for
Central America. He may have thought about why the interests of global
companies had top priority, and why the interests of workers, communities,
and the environment were left out.

Members of Congress and the incoming Biden administration should pursue a
trade strategy that looks less like the failed trade strategies — both the
corporate strategy that brought us the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the
nationalist strategy that the Trump administration pursued. Instead, they
should pursue a strategy that raises wages, creates good-paying jobs, and
protects the environment. That’s a vision of trade worth fighting for.

Hillary Haden|Washington Fair Trade Coalition
206.227.3079|www.Washingtonfairtrade.org
She, Her pronouns
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