<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><a href="https://medium.com/@citizenstrade/trump-ate-the-lefts-lunch-on-trade-again-here-s-how-to-stop-him-6a9fd35ded34" class="">https://medium.com/@citizenstrade/trump-ate-the-lefts-lunch-on-trade-again-here-s-how-to-stop-him-6a9fd35ded34</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><h1 id="aec0" class="fp ge gm bk fy fq gf gn fz fr gg go gp fs gh bf gq ft ga gi fu pw-post-title gb gj fv gc gk fw fo gd gl fx" data-testid="storyTitle" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1.19em 0px 32px; font-family: sohne, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); line-height: 52px; letter-spacing: -0.011em; font-size: 42px;">Trump Ate the Left’s Lunch on Trade Again — Here’s How to Stop Him</h1><div class=""><p id="afaa" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">A few years back, the National Park Service posted a <a class="mm af" href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=654037325978899" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">rare aerial video</a> on social media that illustrated a perfect example of “kleptoparasitism” in action.</p><p id="e9f9" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">In it, Yellowstone’s Junction Butte wolf pack slowly and methodically worked together to successfully hunt down a large elk — only to have a grizzly bear run up when they finished and claim their meal for itself.</p><p id="9462" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">If you want another example of kleptoparasitism, look no further than Donald Trump stealing the left’s lunch on trade.</p><p id="70d0" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">For more than thirty years, labor unions, environmentalists, family farmers, consumer groups, congressional Democrats and others have led the charge against corporate-driven trade proposals that offshore jobs, suppress wages, accelerate inequality and cause other day-to-day harm to millions of Americans and people throughout the world.</p><p id="f6c6" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">On those occasions when progressives lost — during the original North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fight or on Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for China — it was always because the vast majority of congressional Republicans joined whoever was in the White House at the time to advance corporate interests’ agendas.</p><p id="af27" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Remarkably, however, the left often outorganized the combined power of Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, Wall Street, Walmart and the White House, beating back the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), World Trade Organization (WTO) expansion, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other attempted corporate power grabs.</p><p id="e45d" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">None of this work was easy, but the rage working-class people rightly felt and continue to feel over the fundamental injustice of corporate-rigged trade deals that destroy livelihoods and communities made mass mobilization possible.</p><p id="bbcf" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Bernie Sanders was among the first politicians to successfully tap into public anger over trade, and he <a class="mm af" href="https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/20160703_Sanders__Party_platform_still_needs_work.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">used it to help catapult himself</a> from a voice-in-the-wilderness, Kucinich-type presidential candidate into a national figure with real bottom-up political support behind him.</p><p id="f498" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">But Sanders’ success wasn’t enough to convince establishment leaders from either major political party to buck their corporate donors on this issue.</p><p id="04fa" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Instead, as we’ve now seen for the second time, Trump capitalized on that void, stepping in and twisting public anger at corporate-driven trade deals into in anger over foreign trade deals — a subtle, but important difference that fits his corporate nationalist agenda.</p><p id="4c56" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Trump’s repeated claims that China, Mexico and other countries got the better of the United States in past trade negotiations leaves the corporate lobbyists behind those trade deals largely off the hook. This xenophobic scapegoating also allows him to <a class="mm af" rel="noopener" href="https://medium.com/@citizenstrade/nationalism-has-nothing-to-offer-working-americans-920c0646d9e5" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">falsely equate Americans’ shared nationality with shared economic interests</a>, the only worldview within which a billionaire known for his catchphrase “you’re fired” could successfully paint himself as a champion of the working class.</p><p id="a76d" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Trump loudly promised to bring back American jobs, but in reality, the conman spent his first term <a class="mm af" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/trump-corporate-tax-reform-jobs/544487/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">cutting taxes for companies that move jobs overseas</a> and negotiating a trade deal with China packed with provisions that make it even safer and easier for companies to relocate jobs there. The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs declined during his time in office.</p><p id="41a1" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Trump famously promised to eliminate NAFTA, but instead he renamed it — of course, only after trying to pack it with new giveaways for the pharmaceutical and Big Tech industries. (This was something Democratic congressmembers, unions and others on the left, again, fought against and are responsible for at least some improvements on.)</p><p id="26bc" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">You’d think Democratic politicians would have screamed all this potentially-disqualifying information about Trump from the rooftops during the 2024 election. Instead, <a class="mm af" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/us/politics/casey-pennsylvania-senate-ad-trump.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">one Democratic Senator</a> actually spent nearly a million dollars running ads in Pennsylvania claiming he “sided with Trump to end NAFTA.”</p><p id="31d8" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">In juxtaposition, the Biden-Harris administration increased U.S. manufacturing jobs during their tenure. Not only did they reject the corporate-driven trade model of the past, insisting instead on “worker-centered trade,” but they i<a class="mm af" href="https://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/blog/2024/05/14/biden-tariffs-another-positive-step-for-jobs-and-the-environment/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">ncreased tariffs on unfair imports</a> and helped shepherd more investment into new manufacturing plants than at any point in the last 50 years.</p><p id="25c3" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Despite <a class="mm af" href="https://uaw.org/new-uaw-political-video-calls-out-trumps-con-job-on-u-s-manufacturing/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">herculean efforts by the United Auto Workers</a> and others to share this contrasting picture with voters, Democrats’ messaging on this — when not directly counterproductive — was too little, too late. Some voters heard bits and pieces during the final weeks of the campaign, but it wasn’t a central component of Kamala Harris’ appeal to voters, nor was there steady promotion of the narrative over the four years Biden-Harris were in office.</p><p id="3df2" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Now that Trump’s been reelected, those of us on the left need to better take on his hypocrisy and lies about trade and engage in the long, hard work of informing the public about what just and sustainable trade policy really looks like.</p><p id="e1d8" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">To start, expect to see the President-elect take credit for the jobs that will soon come online at <a class="mm af" href="https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2024/10/manufacturing-booms-thanks-biden-harris-administration-investments" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">all the new manufacturing plants Biden-Harris and the Democrats helped build</a>, even as he simultaneously refuses to move forward with investments in additional plants because he thinks union-wage jobs in electric cars and renewable energy are somehow too “woke.” This dynamic needs to be aggressively called out in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and beyond.</p><p id="a4fc" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Get ready, too, for the <a class="mm af" href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/usmca-trump-renegotiate/index.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">mandatory six-year review of Trump’s rebranded NAFTA deal </a>— the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — which is likely to be at least as big a sham as the first NAFTA renegotiation. We need to stop new corporate giveaways, and demand that Trump instead either deliver on the large-scale fixes needed for workers, farmers and the environment or deliver on the withdrawal from the pact that he promised was coming in 2017.</p><p id="31b3" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Among civil society groups, we also need to consistently call out Trump’s embrace of white supremacy, antisemitism and xenophobia in trade and every area, and <a class="mm af" href="https://tradejusticeedfund.org/wp-content/uploads/ActivistToolkit_CombattingDivisiveTradeMyths_0124.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit;">educate our own members about both the dangers of nationalism and the importance of cross-border solidarity</a>.</p><p id="0776" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Simultaneously, we need to safeguard against allowing our reflexive opposition to Trumpism in general to box us into mistakenly supporting long-debunked neoliberal justifications for business-as-usual on trade. Moral panic about “trade wars,” “national sales taxes” and the like coming from the corporate media, corporate-aligned politicians and even many of our friends — especially if absent from any sounder trade policy alternatives — will only further push Americans angry about “free trade” further into Trump’s corner.</p><p id="1951" class="md lx lp me ml fq ly lq mf bk lz lr mg fj ls mh lt ma mi lu mb mj lv mc mk lw pw-post-body-paragraph lo b" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2.14em 0px -0.46em; color: rgb(36, 36, 36); word-break: break-word; line-height: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; font-family: source-serif-pro, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px;">Key to our ability to wrestle back control of the trade issue from kleptoparasites like Trump and others of his ilk will be contrasting their nationalist vision, which continues to allow CEOs and billionaires to call the shots, with our own vision of trade that finally puts working people, family farmers, consumers and the environment ahead of corporate profits.</p></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><div class=""><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class=""><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="">
Arthur Stamoulis<br class="">Citizens Trade Campaign<br class="">(202) 494-8826<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">
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