How politics of globalisation of trade changed so fast
COLUMBUS, Ohio: Sherrod Brown won seven terms in the US House and two terms in the Senate by campaigning against “job killing” international trade deals. He has prodded presidents from both parties over their support for NAFTA, CAFTA and expanded trade with China. But he has never, in nearly 25 years in Washington, actually won a congressional battle over a major trade agreement.
This year, it looks like that losing streak will end.
The politics of globalisation have swung quickly and decisively in favour of Brown and his populist allies. A massive trade deal is close to death in Congress. Washington’s long-running romance with freer trade is on the rocks.
That’s partly due to the battle Brown and like-minded law makers have waged against trade agreements for decades. And it’s partly due to Donald Trump: His core supporters, like the union-proud Democrats who love Brown, have rebelled against trade deals, and many Republican politicians have followed their lead.
A bipartisan surge of grassroots anger, over lost jobs and displaced workers, has driven the shift.
Last Sunday’s presidential debate will likely highlight how opposition to trade deals has become the safe position for a Democratic or Republican presidential hopeful. Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton focused much of their economic discussion at the first debate on trade, with both coming out hard against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement now languishing in Congress.
The TPP, as it is known, is a 12-nation trade deal negotiated and pushed by the Obama administration.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said recently that it will not get a vote this year.
If that proves true, and TPP fails to pass in the lame- duck session after the election, advocates on all sides agree the next president is almost certain to let it die in its current form.
That is true of Trump, and signs - public and private - point to it being true for Clinton, despite Trump’s repeated claims that she would embrace the TPP if elected.
“We’re winning on TPP,” Brown said, sounding more optimistic on a trade fight than he has in 10 years of interviews with this reporter.
“The country already was there. It’s just the elected officials and candidates are catching up.”
Most Americans probably would not notice an immediate effect if the deal fails. Supporte rs predict it would boost economic growth (a claim challenged by critics), but only by a modest amount over the next decade.
When Brown, Ohio’s perpetually rumpled senior senator, first ran for his seat in 2006 on a trade- centered platform, several Democratic strategists privately warned the issue couldn’t move voters in a statewide race.
A decade later, both Clinton and Trump are centering their pitches to the swing- state’s middle- class voters on opposition to trade, in speeches that often sound directly sourced from Brown’s playbook (“Myths of
We’re winning on TPP. The country already was there. It’s just the elected officials and candidates are catching up. Sherrod Brown, Senator
Free Trade”).
This comes as concerns, in both parties, are growing about the health of America’s middle class, and with the mounting struggles of large business groups to push some of their top economic priorities, including the TPP, through Congress.
“You’ve got a whole political party now that’s willing to think and talk about it, that’s changed it,” Brown said, speaking of Republicans.
Washington Democrats, he added, have gone from “two to one against, to now, four, five, six to one, against these trade agreements.”
Polls can send conflicting messages on how Americans view trade deals, but they tend to show a few clear trends in recent years.
New data out last week from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs are a good example. They show Democrats have grown more supportive of trade, as it affects the US economy broadly, during the Obama years. Republicans have grown less supportive.
But the survey also shows majorities in both parties remain deeply critical of trade as it pertains to American workers. Just two in fove Americans agree that trade has been good for creating US jobs. Only about one in three say it has been good for Americans’ job security.
Those concerns appear to weigh heavily on presidential primary voters. Clinton fended off her primary opponent, long-time trade critic Bernie Sanders, in part by diving into specific critiques of parts of the TPP agreement, a strategy her aides believe helped her win the Ohio primary. — WP-Bloomberg