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Democrats, labor rights, trade |
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Written by Stumo
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Sunday, 01 April 2007 |
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Democrats want International Labor Standards in trade
agreements. This is fine, as far as it goes, but does not address
the fundamentals of sovereignty and trade imbalance. As Warren
Buffet said in his shareholder letter this year, we had $1.44 trillion
in real trade - in which we
buy something,
and reciprocate by selling something - and we also had $0.76 trillion
in "pseudotrade" - in which we bought but sold nothing in return.
It is the pseudotrade fraction of trade that hurts.
The
addition of labor standards will not change the imbalance, or create
one single job. Assistance to trade-displaced workers - or
"burial insurance" - will also change none of these fundamentals.
But this Wall Street Journal poll shows why some Democrats (though
certainly not all) think they can get by with voting for new agreements
if labor standards have changed.
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