Missing the point dept.: Free trade killed our jobs!

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Stop_Fast_Track_rally_in_D.C.

“Free trade” deals are a Trojan horse: They are more about expanding corporate power and eliminating environmental and labor protection than about trade. AFGE union members in DC, April 2015. CC BY 2.0

Trust Hillary on Trade?
Renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and defeating the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) were part of the Trump and Sanders brand. Voters agreed, and Clinton was forced to say she no longer supported TPP.

But now progressive Democrats are worried because Clinton hired former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar to head her transition team, and he is a strong supporter of TPP. And her vice presidential pick, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, voted for fast-tracking TPP. Is this a message to corporate power that she doesn’t really oppose TPP? (Or just a more general message that despite her Sanders-borrowed rhetoric, she is their friend after all. She still cares!)

The Robots Are Coming!
But should we care, when corporate media are telling us that the real job-killer isn’t the trade deals, it’s the robots? Or maybe all the attention in corporate media to robots  and automation is part of a campaign to undermine opposition to TPP?

It would take a lot to convince voters that trade deals didn’t result in massive job loss. But this focus misses the point. We don’t need those lost manufacturing jobs; we need jobs, and good jobs with decent pay, and real support for people when their jobs disappear.  The question to ask is not “robots or trade deals?” — it’s why can’t our government have a serious jobs program and affordable (or free!) education; why can’t our government take care of people who lose jobs because their company ran off to make greater profits elsewhere? And why can’t we have full employment? It took massive upheaval and disruption by social movements for the ruling elites to address unemployment in the thirties … what will it take now? (If we had a social safety net that took care of displaced workers, they would be less resistant to economic restructuring.)

Candidates always promise job creation, but in fact there has been a bipartisan consensus against it. This is neoliberal doctrine, shared by both Democrats and Republicans: Supporting the working class and the unemployed is not what government is for. We can only solve problems by relying on the market, on private enterprise. The code for that is saying we can’t spend for a jobs program and social supports because we have to “balance the budget.”

But this election season we’re hearing something different. In response to the anti-establishment voter upsurge, we’re not hearing much talk about balancing the budget or reducing the debt, and both Clinton and Trump promise massive infrastructure investment. Trump is characteristically vague, but Clinton also details a host of measures, ranging from infrastructure spending to free public college and debt reduction, to expansion of medicare and social security and (gasp!) taxing the wealthy.

Trade policy is about something else
Here are four ways that talk about trade is talk about something else.

  1. It’s not about trade, it’s about Obama’s legacy. Because Obama regards TPP as central to his “legacy,” many Democrats supporting the TPP say that to oppose TPP, is to attack Obama! (We don’t want to hurt his feelings!)  Liberals who want  to support the TPP can use this as cover; it worked at the convention where Sanders and progressives lost on this issue, and opposition to TPP was left out of the platform. Maybe Obama says it’s about his legacy because he can’t say, if we don’t support TPP, then the pharmaceutical, entertainment and financial industries won’t hand over those huge contributions to Hillary’s campaign chest. (Dean Baker makes this point.)
  2. The TPP is not mainly about trade, it’s even more about further empowering corporations. These trade agreements allow corporations and other countries to overturn our environmental, labor and consumer protection laws as unfair trade advantages, as well as promote offshoring of jobs. (We can’t stop imports of  contaminated food … that would be an unfair restraint of trade!) How this works is a longer story: see details at Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, among a host of other websites.
  3. What is more, the opposition to trade deals is a marker for something bigger. Voters understand quite well that attacking TPP is a proxy for an attack on corporate power and defense of working people, and support for TPP is a marker for obedience to corporate elites. When Sanders, Trump or Clinton said they will oppose TPP, they were saying they are the people who will defend working people not just on trade, but all down the line. That was the power of Trump’s and Sanders’ anti-establishment message; this was their branding, and Clinton was forced to follow their lead.
  4. Could any of them bring back those lost manufacturing jobs? The experts say no. There’s no basis for attacking the trade deals — the jobs are gone for good.   Trump’s promise in coal country to bring those coal mining jobs back reduces his claims to absurdity. Those jobs are gone for good: Appalachian miners lost their jobs to technology (strip mining), natural gas, and concerns about pollution and climate change. Saying Trump and Sanders are wrong about trade deals because “those jobs will never come back” is another distraction.  Opposing trade deals and attacking “globalization” is a marker for something bigger; voters hear it, not as economic analysis, but as defense of working people.
Trump will bring back jobs in coal. Maybe he'll get the vote of this coal miner, Bagger 288.

Trump will bring back jobs in coal? Maybe he’ll get the vote of this coal miner, strip mining Bagger 288. Martinroell, CC BY-SA 2.5.

Who to believe, who to trust? And what campaign promises are credible when we know how Congress and the courts can block progressive programs and can become an excuse for liberals to weaken them … or not even fight for them.

Here we have to begin a different conversation, about the nature of the state, about where power lies and how it is exercised, and about how ordinary people can bring about fundamental social change.

 

 

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