Monday Morning Reads – June 4

It wasn’t that long ago, during the George W. Bush era, that many progressives and Democrats hated those trade deals too i.e. NAFTA, WTO for China, TPP etc. I recall Howard Dean, John Kerry and company wanting to replace “free trade” with “fair trade” under the guise that the existing trade agreements were bad for American union and hourly workers by driving down wages, amounted to a form of neo-colonialism for countries that weren’t equal partners with the western powers, favored private global corporations over state and collectively owned enterprises and were horrible for the environment. I seem to remember huge and yes at times violent demonstrations – especially in Seattle – over this stuff.

I get that the 2008 economic crisis shifted a lot of this stuff to the background as it was an “all hands on deck” situation to save the global economy and sidelined a bunch of other issues. But as the issues that Howard Dean and others talked about never really went away. So why is it that we are all supposed to be free traders now? It is one thing for GOP neoconservatives as well as Clinton-Gore neoliberals – who have the same basic economic policy – to continue to stick up for the trade policies that they created and sustained during the George H.W. Bush – Bill Clinton – George W. Bush era. But where on earth is the left on this issue?

As for the paleoconservatives – which I suppose Trump is a member of to a degree – you have to give them credit. They opposed the global free trade-based economy from the beginning. Pat Buchanan despised the Bushes for it, was a longtime gadfly and even ultimately split from the GOP over it. Ross Perot also split from the GOP and mounted a third party challenge against Bush and Clinton over it. So I guess you can say that Trump succeeded at what Buchanan and Perot – who were also rather isolationist militarily – tried to do a quarter century ago … although I want to be fair and point out that Perot never was an ethnonationalist. (Yes he was a restrictionist on illegal immigration, but back then that was a mainstream position for both parties, and some of the most ardent opponents to open borders were progressives such as civil rights and union leaders.)

But where are the progressives on this issue? Are they going to join up with the economic neocons in both parties on this issue merely to avoid the appearance of lending support to Trump? If so, who is going to take up this agenda, say, in 2020 when Trump loses and the GOP reverts back to free trade ideology and what are they going to base it on?

I am not one of those who believes that this is an issue where the far right and the far left are odd fellow travelers due to their mutual extremism, which is the case with such things as conspiracy theories and anti-semitism. What is now reviled as jingoistic protectionist economic nationalism used to be a mainstream bread and butter position for both parties until the George H. W. Bush administration, which was then endorsed by the Clinton administration. The left has already abandoned Clinton’s positions on law enforcement, welfare reform, charter schools etc. and has essentially repudiated his entire accomplishments, agenda and ideology except for free trade. It is very unusual and I would be curious to know why.

https://truthout.org/articles/radical-reading-the-progressive-dr-seuss/