Read Elizabeth Warren’s New ‘Our Terms’ Trade Policy
Via Elizabeth Warren
Last month, I released my economic patriotism agenda – my commitment to fundamentally changing the government’s approach to the economy so that we put the interests of American workers and families ahead of the interests of multinational corporations. I’ve already released my ideas for applying economic patriotism to manufacturing and to Wall Street. This is my plan for using economic patriotism to overhaul our approach to trade.
For decades, big multinational
Preach it, sistah!
Eh.
The nuts and bolts of it make for a good idea. Strive to pave a different path to trade other than the neoliberal agenda or autarky by broadening the stakeholders to include labor, consumers, and human rights and environmental activists and pound the easy points like being against human trafficking or religious suppression. I get it. The policy’s…fine.
The problem is the politics of it. The headline is “economic patriotism” and that plays to Trump’s strength because nooooobody will get into the nuts and bolts other than wonks. It concedes too much. The idea is that the trade agreements hurt America, and therefore Trump was right and patriotic to end them, but has to be nudged a bit at the edges. You will not out-patriot Trump. You have to hit the raw nerves of people hurt by the tariffs, hurt by lack of access to foreign markets, and point out every marginal increase in price and taxes/debt to pay for the subsidies that bankroll Trump’s bungling foreign policy. Hit the decline in manufacturing. Hit the broken promises and the lack of return to glory days and compare Trump’s rhetoric to reality.
Then, once you win, you implement the policy.