|
Trade agreements twist and distort trade to cause a lot of negatives
that would not otherwise happen. The idiosyncratic factors of the
Colombia FTA flap reveal the deeper
issue that trade agreements - as opposed to trade itself - are losing
support.
1. The public does not like them, regardless of party.
2. Domestic manufacturers that used to support them no longer do.
2.
Farm groups are split, and the pro-trade faction is not committing the
resources to fight for trade agreements as a priority.
3.
Labor organizations that opposed the agreements on labor and
environmental grounds are now broadening their rationale to more
fundamental economic factors.
Last week, Bush sent the Colombia FTA to Congress, starting the
90 day Fast Track countdown to an "upper-down" vote. No
amendments. Gotta vote. Here's your medicine, shut up and
swallow it or we'll denounce you publicly as a vile protectionist.
The shallow story is that Pelosi was upset that Bush foisted the deal on Congress too soon,
so she legislatively maneuvered a halt to the timeline for a
vote. Both Pelosi and Harry Reid are generally pro-trade, in my
view, having helped orchestrate the lame-duck passage of a Haiti FTA in
an omnibus bill in December 2006 after the Democratic successes of the
November 2006 election. Her "intransigence" may have kept the
Colombia FTA alive.
The strain over the trade pact bubbled to the surface last week
after the president told the speaker he was submitting the agreement
against her advice as well as that of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
majority leader. Though she advised him again to hold back on the
agreement, the president said he was moving ahead.
The deeper story is eroding overall support for stupid NAFTA
retreads. A small flap between the Speaker and the President
would never have stopped a free trade agreement
before. That was the whole point of Fast Track, keep it
moving. The AFL-CIO has a compelling message about the brutality
of Colombian President Uribe, but that message would have been
overwhelmed by the bandwagon of wacko free traders in days long past.
Editorial
boards still lecture us about "Economics 101", since that is probably
all the economics those journalists ever undertook... maybe they just
audited the course. Few pay attention to them now. They
look silly. Trapped in in a 1994 feedback loop, like the movie
"Groundhog Day."
We are getting closer to a time when we can
retool trade policy. Make it subservient to the national interest
and the citizens' interest rather than predominant. The road is
still long. The multinationals have not cut back on their
lobbyist expenditures, and neither have foreign governments wanting an
outsourced piece of our economy. But there is a major shift happening
now, frustrating all that lobbying might.
 |
