In the 1990's free trade beat fair trade in the polls.  In this first 21st century decade, the opposite is true.  I prefer "smart trade," a phrase used by Bob Baugh of the CPA board.  But the trend is the point, not the exact label.

Democrats are divided over trade.  Let's use the Peru FTA vote from last November and December as a proxy.  A majority of Senate Dems supported the Peru FTA last year, with the freshman Dem Senators primarily voting no.  In the House, the opposite was true, a slight majority of House Dems opposed the Peru FTA.  The Dem voters will likely send more trade skeptics to Washington.

Federal Republican legislators have large majorities favoring so-called free trade, which is quite a distance from the grass roots voting Republicans, if polls are to be believed.  The Republican voter has not yet brought their leaders to heel, but that convergence will probably have to happen. 

The WSJ says today that trade is substantially impacting this year's election.

By Charles Blum

Cross posted from IAS Group Blog

REAL MONEY
 
The venerable New York Times editorial page mangled a basic fact a couple of days ago (“As China Goes, So Goes …,” October 27).    I take the time for this nit-picking not just because some of us expect the American newspaper of record Times to get everything right, but because the correction may be illuminating.
 

Oil producing countries, or at least their leaders, seemed rich to me when oil was at $25 per barrel.  But what do I know?  They certainly were rich when oil was $145 per barrel. 

Now oil is below $70 and oil producing countries are in trouble.  Odd.  Does the whole world spend like a drunken sailor?

So Russia is bailing out the big wigs.  Sound familiar?

Companies belonging to two of Russia’s richest men are among the first recipients of a $50 billion bailout program. The project, like so much else here, is opaque in its details but has resulted in some of the nation’s oil windfall being funneled to well-connected Kremlin insiders.

Russia built up huge financial reserves when oil was high, but...

On Aug. 8, reserves peaked at just under $600 billion, the third-largest in the world. By this week, they had fallen to $484 billion, as money flew out of government vaults to support the ruble, prop up the banking system and bail out the businesses of the rich Russians known as oligarchs.

This week’s fall — $31 billion — was the steepest so far. With no end to the global troubles in sight and a worldwide recession likely, which could further reduce oil prices, the question is: How long can Moscow keep this up before its reserves grow thin?

In the U.S., the courts are involved with the safety of products.  If a consumer is injured by a product, the consumer used the product as intended, and the product was defective due to the manufacturer's failure to use due care in ensuring safety, the manufacturer is liable. 

If thousands of consumers were injured, then class action suits are sometimes allowed.  If the facts of the case, the injuries and the cause of the injuries are sufficiently similar, courts will allow many cases to be combined in one case to avoid having thousands of small, individual trials.

In China, courts are theoretically a line of defense for unsafe products, but not in practice.  But Chinese citizens are giving it a go in the melamine-poisoned milk context.