Why Obama Shouldn't Cave on Trade

Like torch-bearing villagers descending on a heretic's home, leading commentators such as The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post editorialists, Andrea Mitchell, Fareed Zakaria, and BBC editor Matt Frei, have warned Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in menacing terms: stop "pandering" to unions on the issue of unrestrained corporate globalization.

"The kinds of conditions that he has promised labor he would try to negotiate are really non-starters," MSNBC's Mitchell ominously declared on July 1. "All bets would be off. You can't go there."

Translation: Obama must prove his independence from such special interests by quaffing heartily from the "centrist" chalice of undiluted "free trade."

However it might please the pundits who overwhelmingly support unfettered free trade, for Obama to drink the "free trade" Kool-Aid would be toxic and could cripple his presidential bid. Unfettered "free trade" is immensely unpopular with the American electorate (see below for a summary of polling data) and represents a ruinous economic policy that has decimated working families and industrial communities by gutting the nation's manufacturing base.

Free trade's shriveling support is openly acknowledged by some of its most ardent champions. "It's a very unpopular position," admits Robert Reich, who identifies himself as a free-trader, even though he fought for strong labor protections to be included in trade agreements when he served as Clinton's labor secretary. "In Michigan, you can find almost as many free-traders as you can chicken hawks. There are not many."

But it's precisely this "very unpopular" position that a sizable posse of pundits is pressing Obama to adopt in the name of winning over voters in the "center." For example, his call for imposing strong labor and environmental standards in existing and future trade deals would be politically and economically disastrous, proclaim even "liberal" editorialists and pundits afforded major exposure.

Shifting Ground

Clearly, Obama's own carefully calibrated, oft-shifting messages on "free trade" have invited this deluge of bad advice. Despite his background as a community organizer among workers whose steel mills had shut down, Obama has at times advocated a passive adjustment to corporate globalization and its most devastating effects. These remarks earned plaudits from The New Republic's Josh Patashnik, who praised a 2005 speech focused not on "stop[ping] trade or globalization" but asserting "the government wasn't doing enough to compensate the losers."

But Obama's increased contact with actual voters during the early primaries showed them to be infuriated with NAFTA in particular and "free trade" in general. In the Iowa primary, populist Democrat John Edwards finished an unexpectedly strong second to Obama, largely based on his forceful criticisms of "free trade." Anti-outsourcing Republican Mike Huckabee scored a surprising first-place finish in Iowa

In neighboring Wisconsin, Obama's advocacy of a hard-hitting anti-outsourcing position was richly rewarded with a big win on February 19 that captured a majority of white working-class males. Outside a GM plant since slated for closing, Obama denounced "a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who've seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear."

By calling for NAFTA's re-negotiation and challenging other key elements of the current "free trade" system, Obama provoked a sharp escalation of pressure from the media elite to swear off far-reaching reforms of global trade. Here are four examples:

• A Seattle Times editorial demanded that Obama "state that he will not backtrack on [support for "free"] trade."
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