Doubletalk on Trade

Marc Ambinder flags this video David Sirota put together calling into question Hillary Clinton's bona fides as a Sirota-style populist trade skeptic:

Ambinder remarks:

But has Clinton really become a fair trader? Or is she modulating her language to adapt to the populist vapors of the Democratic base? A case can be made for the latter -- and in this case, it's instructive to compare the Republican elite's view of immigration to the Democratic elite's view of trade. [...]

In the same vein, Clinton (and Barack Obama) face a reality that the Democratic base lives elsewhere. The rhetoric changes and carrots are offered: Periodically reviewing trade agreements, as Clinton wants to do, isn't the same thing as cancelling them; a temporary pause is not the same thing as a permanent moratorium until labor standards can be brought up to snuff; adding oversight to enforce current law is...adding oversight. Proponents of this view note that she supports expanding NAFTA to include Peru...as did Obama. At the core of this critique is the idea that Clinton remains a captive of the corporate interests who pushed NAFTA and who have funded the Clinton political machine for decades.

I listened to Nancy Pelosi make the fair trader case for the Peru deal earlier this morning, and I have to say that it sounded pretty convincing to me. Then again, I'm not much of a fair trader so I'm probably not the best person to judge whether or not fair traders should find the fair trade case for the Peru deal convincing. I can say that fair traders almost certainly shouldn't take Hillary Clinton's conversion to NAFTA-skepticism seriously. Saying bad things about a trade deal you supported at the time and don't propose rescinding is the ultimate in cheap talk.

More to the point, the way you can tell you shouldn't take the idea of Clinton changing her stripes on this is that you're not hearing any of the plugged-in free-trade Dems complaining about her apostasy. If Bob Rubin's not worried, then I doubt there's no reason for Rubin's detractors to be excited.

Comments

One more reason to take Hillary seriously--she's not caving in to the morons who want to take the Democrats back to the future--protectionism, isolationism, soak-the-rich class warfare--all the ideas that predict Democrat electoral futility.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 16, 2007 4:52 PM

Hillary Clinton didn't fully support NAFTA at the time. Bill was all for it but Hillary voiced opposition to it in internal White House conversations.

The level of silliness induced by the existence of the Clinton's from the left and right and center is just mind-boggling.

Posted by Paul | November 16, 2007 4:58 PM

populist vapors of the Democratic base

Urgh.

Posted by Bave Dee | November 16, 2007 4:59 PM

Excuse me Mr. Russert, but perhaps "ambiguity," (the mother's milk of politics) might be a little more fair than the headline "doubletalk."

Posted by footloose | November 16, 2007 5:25 PM

- Thos of us who do care about 'fair' trade have heard all the lies and promises before. Bullshit people like Robert Powell up there spew because they can't be honest and admit that they plan on redistributing wealth towards themselves.

Posted by Soullite | November 16, 2007 5:29 PM

But has Ambinder really become a Clinton-hating rightwingnut? Or is he modulating his language to adapt to the Scaife-funded vapors of the Republican base? A case can be made for the latter . . .

Posted by rea | November 16, 2007 5:43 PM

Wow. The Clintonistas are almost as thin skinned as the Paulites.

Posted by MattXIV | November 16, 2007 5:46 PM

But has Ambinder really become a Clinton-hating rightwingnut?

Excuse me? The quoted text - and the linked video - are criticisms of Clinton from the left. Hence the reference to the "populist vapors of the Democratic base." Not every attack on Clinton is the work of Richard Mellon Scaife's right-wing minions, as much as Clinton and the DLC would like you to believe otherwise.

Posted by Christmas | November 16, 2007 5:50 PM

I don't think it's implausible that Clinton's become a fair trader. After all, many of the left-ish orientation have. I remember back in the olden days, it seemed like free trade skeptics like John Emerson were lonely voices in the wilderness in places like Brad Delong's comments. Now it's usually we free traders who are in that position. I think a lot of ex-free traders have changed their mind on this matter.

That said, I understand that the new progressives don't much care for either of the Clintons, and don't want to look at the Clinton years -- during which inequality continued its upward slope, and the health insurance situation deteriorated -- with rose-colored glasses. However, it's not true that median income stagnated after NAFTA! In fact, median income started growing strongly around 1994 or 1995. I wouldn't attribute this to NAFTA, and maybe a fair trader would claim that median income would have grown even more without NAFTA, but median income did quite well from the mid-90s until the NASDAQ bubble popped.

Posted by Julian Elson | November 16, 2007 6:27 PM

I can say that fair traders almost certainly shouldn't take Hillary Clinton's conversion to NAFTA-skepticism seriously.

I don't take Clinton's conversion to so-called fair trade seriously, and to me that's one of her candidacy's biggest attractions.

Posted by Jasper | November 16, 2007 8:15 PM

"Fair trade" is bullshit, of course. It's about getting our trading partners to give up their factors of comparative advantage--i.e. that they have low salaries and a not very enlightened view of worker and environmental protections. Oddly enough, most of the partisans of fair trade are in the United States, and they're (hmm, what's the euphemistic construction here?) not unconnected to sectors that have been harmed by imports.

Having said that, I'm not a free trader. I've thought about it for a while, and recently I've decided that I'm not. So what's left, if free trade puts us on an unattractive path to total deindustrialization and fair trade is a hoax? Cover your ears, children and economists: managed trade! Bilateral agreements, quotas, the whole ball of wax. This theoretically unsound not-really-a-system worked pretty well for more than a generation, until the 1980s. Let's go back to it: a frank acknowledgment that countries have interests that trump any given desire of corporation X to produce here and sell there.

I'd be sympathetic to an otherwise-moderate Democratic candidate who broke out of the hegemony of free trade/fair trade. Until that happens, I have to tough it out with Clinton, because as Jasper says (above), her conversion to fair trade isn't sincere. What a fucked-up world we live in.

Posted by Rich | November 16, 2007 9:21 PM

Every job you protect through "fair" or "managed" trade is a job you subsidize by taxing the consumers the extra cost on the more expensive products the protected job produces. All of this while you undermine the efficiency and the dynamism of the economy, as well as the long-term prosperity of the nation.

Free trade is for economists what global warming is to environmental scientists. A phenomenon where scientific consensus exists. In no other issue in economics is there so much consensus.

The only protections I can agree with are for safety standards and regulations.

Building an efficient and flexible safety net so that working people can move between jobs without facing the insecurities and adversities they do now is a much better response to the concerns of the "fair" traders.

Posted by Nick Kaufman | November 16, 2007 10:38 PM

"Every job you protect through "fair" or "managed" trade is a job you subsidize by taxing the consumers the extra cost on the more expensive products the protected job produces. All of this while you undermine the efficiency and the dynamism of the economy, as well as the long-term prosperity of the nation."

Not only that, each job protecting with tariffs, etc. costs the American economy more than twice the actual salary of that worker, such as protecting a steel worker making $80,000 can cost the American economy up $200,000. It would be a lot more efficient to simply redistribute the whole salary to the worker who lost their job until they can get a new one.

Posted by Reality Man | November 17, 2007 3:06 AM

I was an undecided voter before the Democratic debate in Las Vegas, but now I know I will not support Hillary Clinton. She planted questions at the debate, she intimidated the moderator beforehand, she stacked the audience with her stalwarts, and now she is covering up her so-so performance at the sham debate with a whisper campaign against Barack Obama. How hypocritical! Would she like it if the press dug into Bill Clinton’s post presidential sex life? How about using presidential pardons to raise funds? How about the illegal bundling by Norman Hsu? And she has the nerve to accuse John Edwards of throwing mud for talking about fixing health care? God, what is wrong with the news media? Clinton News Network indeed.

Posted by Flip-flops on trade | November 17, 2007 5:37 PM

Nice video, but its splashiest "fact" - that wages continue to stagnate since NAFTA was signed in 1994 - is incorrect.

Since 1994, real household income for the lowest-earning 10% of Americans is up 8%. Median real household income is up 11.5% over the same period.

If household incomes are so rosy, what about individual incomes? Median incomes for males during the 1994-2006 period are up 10.5%. Median incomes for females are up 24.3% over the same period.

Source: US Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h01ar.html
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p05ar.html

Posted by Gary | November 17, 2007 6:12 PM

Neither Clinton was a free trader - NAFTA has a royal misnomer. It is not really a free trade agreement. Were it a free trade agreement, the rules section wouldn't be nearly as long. It would, however, include something about ending the buckets of money we waste subsidizing farms in the U.S.

Posted by Angry Sam | November 17, 2007 9:51 PM

The US gets so much advantage out of all its trade agreements that it's hilariously sad that people are complaining about it. Yeah, we've lost much of our manufacturing base - so fewer guys sweating to death singing Bruce Springsteen songs. The fact is that the jobs that grew out of that offshoring are much more stable and much more profitable - if the American public actually works hard and uses its brains. 35 cents out of every $20 Barbie stays in China - the US basically $19.65, but many "progressives" wax nostalgic about the 35 cents. Read Martin Wolf's "Why Globalization Works". It's not a completely free lunch, and our piss poor management of these trade agreements to actually be fair to the 3rd world is shameful. But where we do play fair, it really does help out. And yes, we can have better retraining programs, better supports for needed industry, etc.

Of course there's also an element of blaming free trade for our woes when blaming an idiot president should be enough. Canada's dollar is worth more than the US dollar now - it's all absurd.

[PS - I'm not saying all manufacturing should go away, but there was a lot in the US where we simply didn't over any value over doing it elsewhere with lower wages. But there are sectors that require a better educated workforce combined with innovation, protection of intellectual property and other location-based advantages. These manufacturing jobs should stay here. Many of them are just fine overseas.]

Posted by Desider | November 18, 2007 12:05 PM