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Austan Goolsbee is Obama's chief economic advisor. He should
now be Obama's former chief economic advisor. He is as to Obama
as Robert Rubin is to Clinton. A really bad influence on trade
and national economic strategy issues.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I've been concerned about Goolsbee. And appearances matter.
Elections now turn on trade issues. It is bad to be a wacko free trader.
Obama and Clinton are both challenging NAFTA on the campaign
trail. Goolsbee had a conversation with Canadian government
officials. One of them wrote a memo on the conversation, and the AP got a hold of it. The memo said:
"Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S.
economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist
sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the
primary campaign. He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken
out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning
than a clear articulation of policy plans...
On NAFTA, Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally
changing the agreement and more in favor of strengthening/clarifying
language on labor mobility and environment and trying to establish
these as more 'core' principles of the agreement."
There's more bad news in NAFTA and its progeny than labor and
environmental provisions. We've got record deficits.
Unsustainable deficits. And a recession.
And Goolsbee still apparently doesn't get it.
The Associated Press reported that "he said he has been surprised
that such a banal and trivial meeting with a low-level consulate
official has created so much controversy and resulted in such an
inaccurate depiction."
Goolsbee is a University of Chicago economist. I don't like
Chicago Schoolers. They think transnationals should do whatever
they want without constraints. I wrote about my Goolsbee-based nervousness before (also here), when I quoted him saying:
"Everywhere you go you've got this widespread feeling, especially
in the labor community, that all of the wage problems of the middle
class are due to trade," says Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago
economist advising Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
Obama was a University of Chicago law professor. Its a good
law school. Their economic department is not good, but
destructive. Milton Friedman came from there, and he pushed the
ideology that businesses should not be constrained by national
interests.
Goolsbee should probaby go.
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