Blog entry

McCain Pledges Allegiance to NAFTA

Robert Borosage — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:16:55 -0400

Arizona Sen. John McCain continues his rousing campaign tour of the swing states of NAFTA this week. He will celebrate July 3 in Mexico City after a jaunt through Colombia to pledge support for the pending free trade accord with that center of cocaine trade. He surely will increase his margin over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama among business elites in Mexico and Canada. Obama will travel to Zanesville, Ohio, once more exposing himself to McCain's jibes about embracing "protectionist" policies.

No, this isn't a joke. McCain is stumping Colombia and Mexico, a week after his visit to Ottawa, championing the North American Free Trade Agreement to business elites in those countries.

McCain's has a pat routine for these junkets. He piously intones homilies on the benefits of free trade: "We need stand up for free trade with no ifs, ands or buts about it. We let trade and globalization be politicized at our own peril." He repeats a sanctimonious pledge never to "dishonor" America by even contemplating any deviation from the "sacred" NAFTA treaty. He issues stern condemnations of the dangers of "mindless protectionism." And expresses his fervent faith in the ability of American workers to compete with anyone anywhere.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, goes the old saw. And with McCain, it seems ever more obvious that you can't trust an old salt on a new ocean. He simply doesn't get it. For years, the trade debate featured the above mantra he repeats. Trade, by definition, benefited America. Sure, a few privileged union workers might lose their cushy jobs and padded salaries, but they would find new jobs in the expanding global economy. Americans would prosper from investments abroad, our financial services industry would capture the high end of the expanded world economy, we'd sustain our manufacturing edge by becoming more productive and we'd benefit from lower priced goods imported from abroad. The earth was flat, Tom Friedman taught us, and we're all the better for it.

Except it hasn't quite worked out like that. Productivity went up, but wages stagnated at best and insecurity increased. Corporations clubbed workers with the threat of moving abroad, and cut back on salaries, job security, and benefits like health care and pensions. Families went ever deeper into debt as the cost of basics—education, health care, retirement security, and now food and gas—soared. More and more workers lost good jobs, only to be forced into those that paid less with fewer benefits. And now with the global workforce effectively doubled as China and India and the former Soviet Union joined the global maw, it isn't just industrial workers at risk, but some 30 million jobs that could face offshoring, according to such sober free trade advocates as Alan Blinder. Financial services did prosper, until their greed and gambling blew up in the housing bubble.

The U.S. went further and further into global debt, running up trade deficits that are still $2 billion a day despite the decline in the dollar. Last month, the Chinese announced they were netting $2.5 billion a month—$100 million an hour—in foreign exchange. Their sovereign investment funds are now hunting for good deals across the world.

NAFTA, sold as a source of jobs for the U.S. and a solution to the immigration flows from Mexico, hasn't worked that way either. Our trade deficit with Mexico has soared from a basic balance before NAFTA to an all-time high of $74.3 billion last year. Mexico now exports more cars to the United States than the U.S. exports to the world. Immigration tensions grew as small farmers got displaced in Mexico by subsidized U.S. food exports, and started coming north in large numbers.

Elites found ways to protect themselves. Lawyers, doctors, prescription drug companies use licensing and patent laws to protect their wages and profits, but most Americans worry about how their kids were going to sustain a middle-class life style. Globalization isn't the only reason the middle class is declining—the war on labor, the worship of the CEO and other factors contribute—but it certainly is a significant reason.

And across the world, developing countries discovered the NAFTA model didn't work for them either. The countries that have enjoyed success—the Asian tigers, China—play by a very different set of rules. They target industries, and pursue aggressive mercantilist policies to capture export markets. They run up large foreign reserves to be able to protect their currencies from global speculators. China's bosses have been happy to lend us the money to keep buying the goods our companies were making over there—and will manipulate the value of their currency until they capture the markets they are seeking. But it is hard to argue, as McCain does, that free trade is spreading democracy across the world when the most successful economy is a communist dictatorship.

Now even champions of free trade, like former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers admit this hasn't quite worked out as they hoped. Across the world, the revolt against the corporate trade model is growing. In the U.S., a majority —58 percent—of those polled in a January 2008 Wall Street Journal/NBC survey agreed that "globalization has been bad... because it has subjected U.S. companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor."

We face not a choice between "free trade" and "isolationism," as McCain claims, but the challenge of developing a serious strategy for sustaining a robust middle class in a global economy. It isn't a choice between keeping our word and "dishonoring" our commitments, but making a clear reassessment of how we get out of the hole we are in.

Sherrod Brown was elected to the Senate in 2006 through a campaign in Ohio focused on opposition to the trade treaties that have devastated manufacturing jobs in that state. He now has joined with other senators, unions, family farm groups, religious and public interest groups to put forth the TRADE Act. The bill calls for a halt on all new trade accords until the U.S. Comptroller General undertakes a comprehensive assessment of the benefits and the costs of our current agreements, looking at who has benefited—here and abroad—and who has suffered. The legislation then calls for developing a strategy that insures that the benefits of trade are widely shared, that we pursue a policy designed to benefit working people and Main Street, and not simply Wall Street. Obama has laid out elements of an alternative strategy that may form the basis of a new course.

McCain's response to this is like an Inquisition priest discovering free thinking in the pews. Doctrine is sacrosanct. Questioning it is dishonorable. He calls upon Americans to sustain the course we have been on, like lemmings marching stolidly to the sea.

He pretends this is an American tradition, claiming that "every time the United States has become protectionist... we've paid a very heavy price." But this ignores the entire history of this country's rise—with sharp eyed mercantilist trade policies behind tariff walls—to a world economic power with a broad middle class. "Yankee traders" were famed for cutting a tough, practical deal, not for sacrificing their interests for ideological principles.

Nor is McCain such an innocent. He says we mustn't "politicize" trade accords, but trade accords are already heavily politicized. Every trade agreement—particularly NAFTA—features fierce lobbying over every clause. McCain knows this because his entire campaign is staffed from top to bottom by corporate lobbyists, many of whom have earned a hefty buck lobbying to influence and pass trade accords. If McCain is elected, their clients know that they are in line to be first to the trough.

Saint John doesn't sully his rhetoric with these unseemly realities. He seems to want to make trade policy a centerpiece of his election campaign, and doing so will surely help him raise some dough. Obama should take him up on it. Let McCain stump the business elites of Mexico City, Bogota and Ottawa. Obama can join Sherrod Brown championing the concerns of working people in Zanesville and Flint and Pittsburgh. Let voters decide which candidate has his priorities right.

This post originally appeared on HuffingtonPost.com.

All In The Same Sinking Boat

Bill Scher — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:10:29 -0400

A disturbing but sadly predictable jobs report was released today by the Department of Labor: 62,000 jobs lost in June, 438,000 jobs lost during the past 6 months.

This is no limited recession. The New York Times observed that: "June’s job losses affected a range of industries, including banks, construction companies, manufacturing firms and car dealerships. Janitors and administrative workers were the hardest hit, with about 70,000 workers losing their jobs last month alone. Temp agencies lost 30,000 jobs."

Pain continues to trickle up, as those still working are also suffering under the weight of recession. NYT notes "employers are cutting hours for their full-time employees and shrinking salaries." USA Today reports, "Wages are lagging inflation as gasoline, energy and food prices surge."

But this is not a brief bump in the road, a mere cyclical dip that will be quickly forgotten. Weak job growth, flat wages and rising costs have been the hallmark of this eight-year conservative era.

Refusing to invest in modernizing our infrastructure. Suffocating the burgeoning clean energy industry, while keeping America hooked on increasingly expensive oil. Continuing a failed global trade strategy at the behest of multinational corporations. Neglecting to exercise oversight over the mortgage and financial industries. Saddling the next generation with burdensome debt.

The destructive results of these conservative policies is plain for all to see. Because the pain is felt by all.

UPDATE: Apparently it's worse than even I thought. The Onion News Network reports: "Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency"

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

McCain's Long Strange Trip South of the Border

Bill Scher — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:34:23 -0400

The McCain campaign gets ... stranger.

The American economy has been battered on multiple fronts, including the loss of 3.4 million manufacturing jobs. The current trade strategy has not only contributed to the offshoring of jobs, but helped harm the lives of workers abroad. NAFTA in particular has disrupted the agricultural economy in Mexico, displacing peasant labor and driving illegal immigration. Even the pro-NAFTA Heritage Foundation concedes that stark inequality still plagues Mexico.

In turn, public anger with trade agreements written by and for multinationals, protecting the interests of corporations but not workers, is on the rise.

And McCain decides to campaign ... across the border, where the jobs are being sent.

And he releases a new ad, standing by the delusion that the current strategy is creating good jobs for everyone.

MCCAIN: To fuel our economy, we must create more jobs for Americans and for our neighbors to the south. With better jobs, more of them will be able to stay in their country.

We can't go back on our word on free trade promises with Mexico, Canada, Central America or anyone else. We must encourage more trade agreements to create more jobs on both sides of the border. That's why I'm behind the Colombian Free Trade Agreement.

These were the same arguments made 15 years ago to get NAFTA passed. And yes, for our own economy's sake, we must support our neighbors so they will have healthy economies too.

But NAFTA didn't work. Period.

To not even acknowledge that, when it's quite clear to American workers hurting from the impact, is simply strange

To haul out the same musty arguments, and ignore the lessons from what has failed in the past, is only evidence of being out-of-touch with what's going in America and the world today.

This is not a question of trade vs. no trade. There will always be trade.

This is not a question of free trade vs. protectionism. There is no such thing as free trade. Trade agreements like NAFTA are chock full of trade rules, just rules slanting the economic playing field towards multinational corporations.

This is a question about what makes a smart global economic strategy -- with fair trade rules, strong labor and environment standards and forward-thinking public investment -- so workers in America and across the globe will thrive in a changing world.

Want A Progressive Movement? Then Support Progressive Voices.

David Sirota — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:10:53 -0400

We tend to complain a lot about not having progressive voices in the media, and yet we watch how the conservative movement rams their voices into the media through books and publications. When conservative authors sell lots of books or conservative magazines build a big circulation, the rest of the media comes calling. It's a pretty simple formula, and that's why one of the things I tell audiences at my events is that by buying a progressive book or by subscribing to a progressive magazine, you are engaging in an act of movement building. This concept is at the heart of my new newspaper column today.

In the column, I promote three terrific books from three terrific progressive authors - The Real McCain from Cliff Schecter, The Big Sort from Bill Bishop and Bad Samaritans from Ha-Joon Chang.

Since the column began back in September, I have tried to use it as a platform to promote the great work of progressives. Doing that expresses the same impulse that led me to create the Progressive States Network - a group that spends most of its time promoting the terrific work of others at the state level. Such efforts try to counter one of the worst traits that plagues the left: territorialism.

Let's be honest: today, there is still very little national movement-building infrastructure designed to help promote the work of others. The multimillion-dollar progressive institutions in Washington spend almost no time promoting or supporting the work of anyone other than themselves, leaving many local groups, organizers, writers to feel completely alone in their work. The same can be said for some of the biggest Internet-based groups and blogs. (As just a personal aside: After my own book tour when I start trying to find a new job, I am considering a major career change completely out of politics and writing for fear that it is impossible to make a living in this line of work, especially if you don't live in Washington, D.C...I tell you this not to lament and not feeling awful about it - it just may be a fact of life, though I will admit I am a bit surprised about it in that I thought it might feel like the landscape was a bit less bleak after scratching and clawing to get a column into 45 newspapers and writing two NY Times betsellers...any job ideas are welcome...but I digress).

I won't go into the details of the three books I promote in the column - you can read the column for that. The point of this post is for us all to try to understand this problem we face, and work in our own ways to overcome the selfish territorialism that plagues our movement.

When you see authors promoting their work, don't get angry and accuse them of "self-promotion" - and especially don't get angry and then whine and moan that we don't have voices in the media. Instead, help promote the author's work, whether it's my book or someone else's. When you hear of a new progressive organization in your community, don't immediately get angry that others aren't joining your group - reach out and try to see where you can work together. When you see a blog like OpenLeft ask for financial contributions, don't get mad - make a contribution. You get the idea.

Let's be clear - sites like OpenLeft, DailyKos, FDL, and Huffington Post; groups like the Campaign for America's Future and all the grassroots organizations I have worked with on my tour are examples of working to overcome the problem. The most exciting part about this book tour for me has been to meet with thousands of people who are doing the real work of movement building at the local level - not just writing on a blog venting and fuming but doing no long-term organizing. Out of this uprising can come a movement - if we all work together. And working together means, among other things, buying progressive books - whether that's THE UPRISING, the books I profile in my column, or other books.

You can read the whole column at the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, the Vail Daily, TruthDig, In These Times, Credo Action or Creators Syndicate. The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

A Time To Demand a Stand With Workers

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:56:36 -0400

One year ago today, a Senate Republican filibuster killed the Employee Free Choice Act, and with it died one of the most important things Congress could have done to repair the economic damage done to working-class families caused by decades of conservative economic policies.

The right-wing effort to keep that legislation from resurfacing continues in over-the-top fashion. One of the most recent jeremiads against the bill—brought to the fore by the discredited Center for Union Facts, the source of a misleading ad campaign against unions—compares union organizing efforts at a Minneapolis hotel, where the card-check provisions of EFCA were in place as a result of a local law, to the effort by strongman Robert Mugabe to keep power in Zimbabwe, calling the efforts “coercive.”

The idea that union volunteers visiting workers’ homes and encouraging them to sign union organizing cars is remotely comparable to the brutality of the Mugabe regime points to the hysterical desperation of the right over this issue — and the fact that they have no answer to what workers actually say they want.

What they want, as our latest Making Sense 2008 alert shows, is clear from polls in which more than half of all U.S. workers—nearly 60 million—say they would join a union right now if they could. Their best opportunity to get ahead is by uniting with co-workers to bargain with employers for better wages and benefits. Working people want that opportunity.

Plus, the allegations of abuses of union organizers pale in comparison to the abuses of anti-union employers taking advantage of what is now a broken system. Corporations routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and illegally fire people who try to organize unions. Workers are fired in a quarter of private sector union organizing campaigns; 78 percent of private employers require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to their employees; and even after workers successfully form a union, they can’t get a contract one-third of the time. The National Labor Relations Board, once a reliable arbiter of employer-employee disputes, is now so politicized under a Bush administration that is ideologically opposed to unions that it has issued a torrent of precedent-busting anti-union rulings.

The federal government is blocking the freedom of working people to make their own decisions about joining a union. The current “election” system for union recognition is decidedly undemocratic. One side—the corporation—has all the power, controls the information workers receive, and routinely poisons the process by intimidating, harassing, coercing, and even firing people who try to organize unions.

Enacting the Employee Free Choice Act would do three simple, fair things for workers: It would make it possible for a majority of employees to sign union authorization cards, validated by the National Labor Relations Board, to have that union recognized by their employer; it would strengthen penalties for companies that coerce or intimidate employees in an effort to prevent them form forming a union; and it would bring in a neutral third party to settle a contract when a company and a newly-certified union cannot come to an agreement after three months.

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama supports this legislation, Sen. John McCain does not. This is a good time to ask people running for office whether they stand with workers and their right to form unions or with the corporations and conservative enablers who would block this right.

The Growing Power of the Fair Trade Uprising

David Sirota — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:32:19 -0400

LOUISVILLE, KY - I spent yesterday in Ohio's three biggest cities - Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. With the Buckeye State among the hardest hit by lobbyist-written trade policies, it wasn't surprising that NAFTA was at the center of discussion at events for THE UPRISING in Ohio (you can listen to my Ohio NPR interview from yesterday here for a taste).

Over the last few years, polls show the public has moved to something of a consensus position on trade: full-on opposition to NAFTA-style pacts. That's for good reason as this Associated Press report shows. Tearing down tariffs and protections without regard for the consequences is not only a dangerous departure from the policies that built America's economy, but also a deliberate way to force American and foreign workers into a wage-cutting, environment-destroying, union-busting race to the bottom.

The AP story shows the destructive domino effect of NAFTA and the subsequent NAFTA-style agreements like China PNTR. When multinational corporations shift jobs to Mexico, right-wing trade fundamentalists in Washington offer up a "let them eat cake message" telling workers in Ohio that the shift at least helps impoverished workers south of the border. Then, of course, those workers in Mexico are forced to slash their own wages to compete with desperate workers in China. When the jobs inevitably shift to China, Mexico is left in shambles, and then Chinese workers are forced to slash their own wages to make sure jobs don't go to Vietnam or North Korea, where corporations are angling to employ enslaved labor.

Meanwhile, many of these trade fundamentalists like Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria flaunt their supposed environmentalism and humanitarianism by publicly worrying about issues like global warming and the erosion of human rights in the developing world - even though the domino effect they cheer on creates pressure on governments to reduce their pollution controls and human rights in order to retain foreign investment.

The problem, of course, is that it's hard to argue with NAFTA backers because they aren't interested in facts. It was none other than Friedman who admitted he vigorously backed a recent NAFTA-style trade deal without even bothering to read it. He, like every other reporter and commentator in Washington, calls NAFTA-style pacts "free trade" - despite the fact that they include thousands of pages of protectionist provisions for corporate profits, despite the fact that even the original architects of NAFTA have long admitted that these agreements aren't free, but instead create "managed" trade. That's the big problem - these deals are managed to enrich the elite at the expense of the rest of us.

Just like it's impossible to argue about reality with deranged religious fundamentalist terrorists, it's impossible to argue with deranged trade fundamentalists who cloak economic terrorism in the language of enlightenment. It gets to the point where Limousine Libertarians in wealthy enclaves like Boulder take to the websites of major newspapers to cite charts showing the decimation of Americans' wages as proof that NAFTA works for Americans.

Left for dead, of course, is a place like Ohio.

Wealthy pundits from New York and Washington drop into the Buckeye State every four years to berate the occasional Democratic presidential candidate who dares to question NAFTA at the quadrennial photo-op at an abandoned manufacturing plant. In the general election, those Democratic presidential candidates then inevitably hire teams of Wall Street insiders who back NAFTA as their top economic advisers, and then scurry to business publications to reassure corporate lobbyists that no, they aren't really serious about reforming our trade policy. Their Republican opponents, meanwhile, head to places like Colombia to tell the right-wing regime there that America - that purported beacon of freedom to the world's masses - will be helping murderous developing-world governments continue to brutalize workers.

But this quadrennial cycle of deception may finally be changing - and not because of the benevolence of any presidential candidate, but because the political tectonics of trade have shifted so dramatically thanks to those who are doing the unglamorous - but critical - work of leveraging real power.

Groups like Public Citizen and the Citizens Trade Campaign have ignored the Partisan War Syndrome that plagues parts of the blogosphere and the progressive left, and used this election as an instrument of the uprising - rather than seeing the election as an objective unto itself. They have, for instance, used the hard-fought Democratic primary to elicit concrete commitments on trade policy from the candidates - including nominee Barack Obama. Those efforts have been supported by a group of industrial state lawmakers, who have similarly leveraged the election as a way to force a conversation about trade into the national political debate. That conversation has been so intense it even wedged its way into the Republican presidential nomination through the candidacy of Mike Huckabee - a candidacy that won Republican primaries in some of the most conservative states based, in part, on his fair trade message.

These moves around trade suggest the emergence of true movement thinking out of the tumult of the uprising I describe in my book. This fair trade movement may continue to be ignored by the media (and, frankly, much of the blogosphere), but it represents one of the most encouraging transpartisan developments of the last few years. Out of the shadows of the crumbling factories that I have driven by here in Ohio may indeed come real change - if this movement continues to coalesce.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

Turning Anger Into Progressive Action

Bill Scher — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:29:39 -0400

Debating NAFTA On Fox

David Sirota — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:42:00 -0400

I debated my latest newspaper column on NAFTA with Neil Cavuto of Fox Business. Watch it here:

Countering GOP Racism With A Class-Based Uprising Message

David Sirota — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:24:30 -0400

Earlier this week, I wrote a short dispatch about Barack Obama dancing around the issue of trade - an issue at the heart of the populist uprising on both the right and left. Now today, my syndicated newspaper column explores the issue more thoroughly, showing precisely the opportunity the GOP's inevitable racism and nationalism with a populist line on trade.

John McCain is taking an extremist position on the issue - to the point of doing a public event today with Canadian industrialists to promote NAFTA. This extremist position presents a huge opportunity for Obama in states that have been destroyed by NAFTA-style trade policies - swing states from Maine to North Carolina to Ohio.

The problem is that Obama still seems hesitant to take a strong position on trade. He has hired one of Bob Rubin's chief confidantes as his top economic adviser, and he gives speeches depicting those who are pushing a strong fair trade agenda as Luddite protectionists.

This speaks to what we discussed last night for THE UPRISING at a big event here in Chicago at In These Times: the notion of progressive pressure as a positive force for Obama. We have to keep the pressure on Obama to take a strong position on issues like trade - and we have to use the election to leverage that pressure.

Of course, there are those who claim that any pressure against Obama imperils his electoral chances, but that's a farce. In 2006, progressive pressure on Democrats forced the party to take a stronger line on Iraq - and that stronger line helped them win the 2006 election. The same can be the case with Obama on the issue of trade - and if we are effective, we can help him both take a majority position on the issue and win the election.

Read the whole column at the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, In These Times, TruthDig, Credo Action or Creators Syndicate. Then go pick up a copy of THE UPRISING to read more about how trade policy is fueling a backlash on both the right and left.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

Safe Toys, Edible Food, Smart Globalization

Eric Lotke — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:08:44 -0400

Why is it that people who question globalization are treated like Neanderthals?

You’re a protectionist, critics charge. Globalization is here to stay; you can’t turn back the clock, you Neanderthal! Besides, look at all the great stuff we get for cheap!

Well, we can get a lot of great stuff. A lot of it is cheap. But sometimes the low price just hides costs elsewhere. Smart globalizers want to manage the process and make sure the price reflects the reality.

The Campaign for America's Future recently published two reports that reveal the seamy underside of globalization. Toxic Toys is about Halloween candy buckets and Barbie doll accessories imported from China and coated with lead-based paint. It’s about drinking cups with 39,000 parts per million of lead when the legal standard is 600 parts per million. Why the worry? The budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is half what it was in 1974 in real dollars. It’s staffed by former lobbyists and industry cronies who deny there’s a problem and obstruct efforts at reform.

Even people who don’t use toys tend to eat. Our second report, Eating Dangerously, examines the food industry and finds the same disregard for health. Since 1973, agricultural imports have increased by 78 percent while inspections decreased exactly the same 78 percent. Yet the FDA’s own research indicates that pesticide violations and infections from shigella and salmonella occur roughly three times as often in imported food.

The stories are painfully familiar. A million pounds of Chinese seafood sold in the U.S with carcinogens and antibiotics not approved for use in the U.S. Half a million pounds of cantaloupes consumed from Mexico and Costa Rica with salmonella contagion. Even cats and dogs aren’t safe. Melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used to make fertilizer and plastic, made its way into 60 million cans and pouches of pet food.

Tomatoes are today’s trouble. Are they from Mexico or Florida? Eventually we’ll find out. The problem remains the same.

If we were serious about global trade, we would charge something for the price of admission to U.S. markets. We can still open our doors to global trade. But trading partners need to take the melamine out of the pet food, the lead out of the children’s toys, and the pesticides out of the cantaloupe. Those are the standards we hold U.S. manufacturers to; if you want access to our market, you need to play by our rules.

That’s not Neanderthal. That’s smart.

Smart globalizers want to draft standards into trade agreements. They want to inspect enough cargo to provide a credible risk of detection or hold U.S. companies liable for distribution and sale.

The U.S. isn’t doing enough of that. Free market conservatives are in charge. Spellbound by the ideology of the marketplace, they ignore the obvious fact that markets need grown-up supervision. Historically, that’s the role of government. To create collective institutions that protect shared interests in ways that individuals can’t. Lead testing. Pesticide testing. Evaluating the carcinogenic properties of fertilizer.

We can build a government to serve our interests, or we can leave it to the logic of the market and race to the bottom.

Progressives want to evolve. Who’s the Neanderthal?