The truth is, the biggest most powerful economic force facing America today is globalization. Whichever political party puts together a coherent strategy for dealing with globalization in a way that actually serves the American people (and not just the corporate elite) is the party that will be a majority party for years to come.

Can political freedom even survive economic globalization?  Isn't this not only a global economic force but a global political force and is that force for freedom or feudalism? What matters your individual vote if economic power is divorced from the political system? Is the future a Congress of oligarchs like Senator Stevens this week shouting down the request for a vote and exempting global CEO's from the formality of an oath to tell the truth to the American public?  Do we see our future not only in off shore corporations but in off shore foreign gulags?  Is that what globalization really means?  Power beyond the power of any nation's citizens?  Power divorced from any nation's Constitution?  Power only in the hands of those who have the power to take it with no political force capable of providing a balance?

When my representative, Bernie Sanders, guest blogged at this site a few months back, he was widely praised by the regulars here, with just about everyone taking exception to his 'anti-trade' stance. The Beltway Free Traders don't get that Bernie's stance is not only correct (it is NOT anti-trade -- all he asks is that the benefits of trade be spread fairly, here and abroad) but it is also popular -- very popular in fact, across a wide sprectrum of voters, and is the kind of stance that will win elections for Democrats in otherwise red states

Will We Be the Party of the Moustache of Understanding, or of the People?

Not that we want to impose any false choices on our political discourse, mind you.

Speaking of Newman, a labor activist, let's look at labor's record on protectionism over the decades to question whether labor activists are the right people to listen to.

In the 1980's labor was famously protectionist regarding Japanese cars.  Labor organized protest to demolish Japanese cars on the evening news. There were a lot of US auto workers on TV talking about job losses and urging Americans to buy America. Much of America was very sympathetic, for a while at least.

Unfortunately, what labor didn’t do is place significant emphasis on painful questions like asking why the Japanese make such great, efficient, reliable cars, or ask why US auto makers weren’t making equally good cars, or ask why we waste so much energy after the oil shock. If one goes to Detroit or much of the Midwest, one will see the result: SUV and giant pickups as far as the eye can see. It’s better in urban areas, but still much worse than it should be.

We make gigantic clunkers that guzzle gas and are very low tech compared with foreign competitors. The US auto industry has been bolting cheap SUV bodies onto cheap pickup truck chassis to sell to the clueless American consumer, especially the same protectionists who were bashing Japanese cars. 

US auto makers have become the experts in junk, Japanese have become the experts in high tech. We’re manufacturing Toyotas and Hondas in America, you hardly see an American vehicle on the road in Japan or elsewhere abroad, and it’s not because of protectionism, it’s because nobody in Japan even wants a giant, wasteful, low-tech, poor reputation for reliability, American car. Ford is licensing Toyota’s hybrid technology to put in their Escapist SUV (talk about determined stupidity) and much of US are parts are made abroad anyways.

Protectionism won’t solve that. It won’t help Boeing compete against Airbus who are making better planes. It won’t help US cellular markets or stop them from adopting a more sensible Asian/European standard, or stop the Asian/European dominance of the cellular handset market who’ve displaced Motorola. There are so many examples, but the point is that protectionism won’t help failing US industries. There are many reasons why US companies are failing.

American labor has been consistently protectionist for decades, it’s like religion for them. While the concerns of American labor are important, their tendency towards protectionism is very dangerous.

I think the last few years have really shown me what the corporations mean by free trade. Their version has been destroying the American middle class. The changes are packaged as keeping America competitve and once the free trade agreements are in effect, they become reasons to shred the safety net of the American middle class and the poor. This version of free trade has to be stopped; I have moved from a free-trade position to one wanting to see the effects on American workers and understand the safety net of Americans before I support any trade bill.

very popular in fact, across a wide sprectrum of voters, and is the kind of stance that will win elections for Democrats in otherwise red states.

If you're arguing that it makes political sense to lie to voters and tell them what they want to hear, that's a separate debate.

But I hope you're not arguing that it’s actually possible economically to install the sort of protectionist measures much of the public naively wants. There are some small protectionist measures that could be taken, and small wealth redistributions which are possible, but they’re sideshow issues because the real issue is why are American products doing so poorly globally.

If the US auto industry was doing as well as others for one example, exporting as others are, we would hardly need to have this debate because we’d have a lot of happy US autoworkers and happy secondary industries. The bottom line is that US cars don’t export well because they're uncompetitive. 

Pandering to protectionists is equivalent to the far right pandering to it’s religious wingers. Ultimately it’s self destructive and not going to work anyways.

 "If the policies are done right free trade will benefit the US and the world.  If done wrong it harms the US and spreads even more inequality across the globe."

The question is whether we're going to take a course heavily protectionist, and try to tariff our way to prosperity and attempt  impossible labor standards globally as people like Sirota advocate. That would be economic suicide. It wouldn’t help US companies be more competitive or put anyone back in work.

Or we can take the model the Japanese and European have been using which is basically “corporate welfare” growth stimulation, but with a heavy dose of regulatory tough love and knocking heads together.

The problem is we’ve got corporate welfare with no standards on the one hand, so they just take the money and run; and a bunch of hippy and labor protectionists on the other who just want some short term pandering but have no long term economic sensibilities. Both are just short sighted special interests that would sink us all. It’s a major cultural problem and unless we all wake up, we’re just doomed because it’s a culture of poor planning.

As a concrete example of what should be done: Repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. AND reinvest much of it in the private sector, seeding growth industries to create jobs and mandating pro-growth innovation as Europeans and Asians have done so successfully. Business will of course complain because they'd rather have the money in tax cuts with no expectations of them. Labor will of course complain because they'd rather have protectionism and services directly. But ultimately both will be better off.

We also need to streamline our services like medical care to be more efficient so it’s not a weight around all our necks, that's something much of business and the general public can support.

CA’s biotech initiative is an example of what we need, it had bipartisan support and will help create jobs and with any luck be a long term economic winner to lift our economy for decades. But we need many times more such projects. We need to think long term. We also need to face a hard reality there is no way to protect some outmoded US industries, at least not till we have competitive products. We can’t just build tractor factories. We should do more to help them transition, but no more pandering to protectionist special interest delusions.

You know, it would be easy to get angry with this guy, but you know what?  At least he's honest.  This is what the liberal intelligentsia thinks of us, they just couch it in flowery language.  So thanks, man, for putting it like this.  Very helpful.

 RG

Look at the crappy cars Americans are making compared with the Japanese. We can't sell our pickups and SUV globally. The problem is the product stinks, and no amount of protectionism would sell American clunkers to Japan or avoid the fact that American cars are mostly crap.

But the reason Japanese cars are better is because their engineering and design is better, not because they treat workers like crap. Japan is an advanced First World democracy and I have no problem trading with them. If we're getting outcompeted by Japan on something, it's probably because they really are better at it than us. It's "free trade" with the scum of the world (e.g. China) that really gets my goat.

Politically labor represented a major part of our base at one point Nick...a very important part.  Their GOTV efforts were key in our electoral success up until the mid 80's.  Then the democrats turned their backs on labor.  Sure labor is issue specific and takes positions that all of the party might not agree with.  But so do other interest groups like pro-choice, gay/lesbian, environmental and free trade groups.  As labor's membership dwindled so did our success at the polls and I firmly believe it wasn't coincidental.

You can try to set labor up as a strawman all you want but labor didn't cause the problems in the auto industry, as an example.  The lion's share of the blame goes on management's shoulders for being reactive instead of proactive.  They were riding high then the market changed, the people who ran the companies were slow to react and labor took the fall.  Labor was more the victim of the failure and not the cause...

It was never learned except by a few visionaries and the corporate executives after WWII who didn't want America to slip back into the Great Depression with millions of men coming home from war who had been trained to and had, in fact, killed.