The Democrats’ Path to Victory

“An unapologetic, pragmatic, progressive foreign policy would come across more appealing than desperate attempts to be appear tough,” says Stephen Zunes, a foreign policy expert at the University of San Francisco. ​“If you surrender the whole basis of debate to Republicans, rather than change the terms of the debate, you’ll seem weaker.”

Democrats need to change the terms of debate on globalization, as well. Most Americans see globalization as somewhat positive, especially for consumers. But increasingly, the public – including educated workers – sees globalization as a threat to U.S. jobs, incomes and economic security, and as a boon to corporations. 

More than two out of every three Americans view trade as harmful for U.S. workers’ job security, and 60 percent call it detrimental for job creation, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs reported last spring. Even 59 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy, according to a late September NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.

Many of the architects of Bill Clinton’s NAFTA-style approach to globalization – such as former economic adviser Gene Sperling and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers – now acknowledge that those policies have hurt American workers, contributing to inequality as a tiny elite captures virtually all of the nation’s income and productivity growth.

Around the world, opposition grows to the U.S. brand of corporate globalization. In October, the United States used last minute threats of economic reprisal to swing Costa Rican public opinion in favor of ratifying the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Yet key Democrats in Congress continue to push for Bush-negotiated trade deals, even as they begin shifting their positions on trade. Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) negotiated with the Bush administration to include provisions in the Peruvian free trade agreement to protect labor rights and the environment with enforcement through standard trade tribunals.

Congressional critics, such as Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.), question why Rangel and Levin were in a rush to approve the Peru agreement. It contains all of the heavily criticized NAFTA rules on investor rights, government procurement and other corporate protectionism. 

Proponents of labor rights disagree about how enforceable the labor and environmental protections may be, given the wording of the Peru treaty. AFL-CIO experts believe that the treaty’s reference to the international labor organization’s core labor rights includces the more specific and enforceable ILO conventions. But Columbia law professor Mark Barenberg argues that in several regards the Peru agreement is ​“even worse than existing [trade and labor rights] law.” Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has few doubts: ​“We are encouraged by assurances that the labor provisions cannot be read to require compliance with the conventions.” 

While some unions – such as Unite Here and the Teamsters – opposed the Peru agreement, others withheld support. Environmental groups had a similar mixed sense of a narrow achievement within a flawed overall framework. 

Labor unions, environmentalists and other progressive groups are gearing up for more aggressive opposition to pending free trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia, which has the world’s worst record of violence against trade unions. The Bush administration is promoting the Colombian agreement as a way to combat Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s influence in Latin America – swaying at least a few Democratic legislators, like New York Reps. Elliot Engel and Gregory Meeks.

Democrats need to offer more than slightly improved trade deals or even strengthened trade adjustment assistance for displaced workers to make the global economy work for American workers. 

Kenneth Scheve, professor of political science at Yale, and Matthew Slaughter, professor of economics at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, write in the July/​August issue of Foreign Affairs that even workers who do not lose their jobs will lose income in a globalized economy, and that consequently the federal government should change the tax code to redistribute income from the wealthy to low- and moderate-income workers. 

“The issues are way beyond whether we have this or that free trade agreement, or how do we make the deal OK,” says Economic Policy Institute founder Jeff Faux, author of The Global Class War. ​“The idea that you can fool around with these trade agreements and get better language doesn’t deal with the larger questions of the United States’ financial situation or the question of who are these corporations, and who do they represent.”

Among the leading presidential candidates, Edwards has most forcefully criticized corporate globalization and opposed all pending trade deals. Obama made a plant closing as a result of production shift overseas a major part of his Senate campaign, but on the presidential campaign trail he has not been a consistent or profound critic of globalization. (Unlike Edwards, Obama supported the Peru trade deal, even as all three leading candidates announced opposition to the Korean pact and earlier opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement.) Clinton has called for a ​“time out” on trade deals and a periodic reassessment of NAFTA and other agreements, distancing herself slightly from her husband’s hallmark action. 

“I think we’ve seen a huge shift, if you think back to the days when Al Gore was the spokesman for NAFTA against Ross Perot, compared to now, when all of the Democratic candidates are critical to some degree of trade policies,” says Sarah Anderson, global economy project director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. ​“But we don’t have a commitment to complete overhaul.” And the rebound in corporate contributions to Democrats raises the specter of increased business influence on a new Democratic administration. 

The American people appear ready for an approach to foreign policy and globalization that serves working people more than corporate elites. But it’s not clear yet that the eventual Democratic standard-bearer will seize that opportunity.